WooHa! I think I learned my lesson from the last go round like Ewan. I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole.
BTW, I have experience building commercial systems with both CORBA and Web Services. I will simply say that arguing about protocols is a waste of time. They're both just tools. Mike > -----Original Message----- > From: Patrick McConnell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 3:30 PM > To: Simon Brocklehurst > Cc: Ewan Birney; Brian Gilman; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Biojava-l] GO web service > > > Web services are not good for object-oriented distributed systems because > web services do not describe behavior well, they describe data well. > CORBA > is terrible with data because it doesn't interoperate with other systems. > You can build the most beatiful, elegent RMI based system in Java, and I > will never be able to access that functionality from my .NET client, or my > perl client, or my LISP client, or my whatever. For many, this is fine > because they are working within a single business and have control over > both the client and the server. This isn't the case in bioinformatics, > were cross-organizational collaboration is a necessity. > > I think very few bioinformaticians are interested in sophisticated > distributed systems. Instead, they just want to be able to get at data > and > tools easily. I think Web services will do that for them better than any > CORBA based technology. Am I wrong here? > > I have heard the argument before, and I still don't buy that web services > is just CGI done a tiny bit better. CGI and web services have quite > similar qualities and uses, but the ability to strongly type data in XML > and to dynamically discover operations/data types makes web services quite > a bit better. Both of these are keys to successfully building flows of > services, which is were I think web services really transcend all previous > technologies. Now, if we could just get a flow implementation from a > major > vendor, we could start building complex tools from simple web services and > really start using the power of web services : - ) > > -Patrick > > > > > > Simon Brocklehurst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>@biojava.org > on 08/30/2002 03:57:29 PM > > Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > To: Ewan Birney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > cc: Brian Gilman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Patrick McConnell > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: [Biojava-l] GO web service > > > Ewan Birney wrote: > > > I remember all these discussions from those great CORBA days. Boy am I > > staying away from this for the moment... (too scared frankly!) > > > > I don't blame ya... > > I don't want to be negative (it's not useful), but I suspect not > everyone out there is too experienced at building distributed computer > systems. My concern is that this (and other) talk about Web Services > may leave lots of people with the impression that Web Services are > something they're not. > > Two things people need to know: > > 1) Building great distributed computer systems is hard. > > 2) If you're gonna do it, CORBA/J2EE over IIOP/RMI/RMI over IIOP are > orders of magnitude more useful than Web Services over http - assuming > you want to build a distributet, object-orientated (and possible > Enterprise-class) computer systems. > > Right now, Web Services is nothing more than CGI done a tiny bit > better. That's fine if all you want to do is run Blast (in fact, Web > Services is really good things like that). But they're not good if you > want to build an even slightly sophisticated distributed computer > system. > > I truly don't understand the excitement about Web Services - > pleeeaaaasssee no-one say they're really good for tunelling through > firewalls, I can't be doin' with that old chestnut ;-) > > Ho hum... just my two cents etc... > > Simon > -- > Simon M. Brocklehurst, Ph.D. > Director of Informatics & Robotics > Cambridge Antibody Technology > The Science Park, Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, UK > http://www.CambridgeAntibody.com/ > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ > Biojava-l mailing list - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://biojava.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l > > > > _______________________________________________ > Biojava-l mailing list - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://biojava.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l _______________________________________________ Biojava-l mailing list - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://biojava.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
