Jon Udell makes a great point about pervasive
intermediation. His basic point is the architecture of SOAP processing model
is necessary to generalize and extend the ad hoc intermediation architecture of
HTTP, which has proved so essential to the web's scalability and flexibility.
This is a fundamental point about SOAP intermediaries
that I have been trying to drive home as well.
This year's METAmorphosis
conference has the theme pervasive integration, which leads to the
"obvious" conclusion that pervasive integration requires pervasive
intermediation. The web did not disintermediate, it is
reintermediating (refactoring
intermediation).