Tuesday, August 20, 2002

O'Reilly has a nice overview of the many ways XML can be transforming using XSLT within the Microsoft .NET Framework. 4:42:33 PM

A strategic mistake?. Opera casts off legacy code for speed. The Norwegian browser maker, on the verge of releasing a beta version of Opera 7, borrows a page from Netscape's history to rewrite its software from the ground up. [CNET News.com] Personally, I don't think following Netscape's footsteps is a good idea. And what will Joel have to say when he sees Opera making such a strategic mistake? :) [Wrinkled Paper] 4:33:34 PM

Mr. Slippery. I always wish I could read Neuromancer for the first time again, because nothing before or since has given me the rush that it did. What I did come across, recently, was True Names: And The Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier. It's a combination of Vernor Vinge's True Names, which was published in 1981 and presaged Neuromancer, and a collection of mid-90's essays on crypto, identity, digital rights management, and related themes. ... [Jon's Radio] Yes, yes on both. Neuromancer was a ground-breaker. The world of SF was not the same afterwards. And True Names was a true visionary work. In the edition, you describe, the are some fascinating essays. Highly recomended. 3:42:49 PM

Don Box's Spoutlet: "ACID Transactions aren't meant to span across org boundaries. Allowing a third party to enlist in your DBMS transactions is an extremely trusting act to take. If that third party decides to take 10 minutes in phase 1, your DBMS locks will grind your app to a halt. My friend Pat Helland refers to 2PC as the "anti-availability protocol."" In other words, WS-Tx gives you the rope, noose included.  It even throws it up over the branch for you.  You're all set to hang yourself.  :-)   WS-Tx is nice, but use with caution.  It's actually quite difficult to get right. [snellspace] Well, it sure sounds like it. I admit to having difficulties with the concepts of a transaction and 2PC with nodes that could or could not be there. Yikes. 3:25:54 PM

Sanjiva Weerawarana's Radio Weblog: "I think distinguishing between RPC and document styles in choosing the programming model is totally wrong." I think part of the problem is a horrible lack of clarity between the various models. The distinction between RPC-Style and Document-Style SOAP is not as clearly defined as a it should be.  When I think RPC-Style, I think request/response pattern regardless of whether or not the XML in the message is literal or encoded.  When I think Document-Style, I think of things like sending purchase orders over JMS.  In Document-Style, there shouldn't be a notion "operations" because all you're doing is sending a document.  It's up to the receiver to figure out what all it wishes to do with the document that is received.  Most folks seem to think that using literal XML documents to encoded RPC requests and responses qualifies as "Document Style".  UDDI is an example of this.  Most folks would argue that UDDI is a doc/lit style service.  I disagree.  I say it's a rpc/lit style service.  There is very little reason for folks to quibble over programming models when the choice is rpc/enc or rpc/lit, but the difference between doc and rpc is clear, it's the choice between send(document) vs someOperation(parameters[]).  The programming model does matter. [snellspace] 3:23:27 PM

PocketSOAP 1.3.7. just released, contains a couple of HTTP transport bug fixes. [Simon Fell] 1:02:35 AM

© Copyright 2002 Sam Gentile.