Aaron Bartell wrote:
I know that wikipedia isn't absolute truth, but I would imagine the
definition of web services has been critiqued by thousands of individuals
more involved in web services than you or I. Maybe you are thinking of the
WS-I basic profile?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service
Well, as it says on the page you cite, the WS-I requires a WSDL. IBM,
Microsoft, BEA, SAP, Oracle, Sun and Intel all require a WSDL, as does
OASIS. So yechnically you don't need a WSDL - unless you plan to
conform to industry standards.
Honestly, I don't care. EGL can handle either one. Non-compliant web
services are handled as a simple RESTful services. The business
decision is not whether a web service uses a WSDL, the business decision
is whether you want to be compliant with industry standards. Certainly
you can implement as many non-compliant protocols as you want.
I will say this, though: if you're going to be non-compliant, there is
no reason to use XML and SOAP. The added overhead of the SOAP envelope
alone is impossible to justify.
So, while you can probably technically get away the argument that you
don't need a WSDL for a web service, at that point you can't justify
SOAP and XML, because the extra overhead serves no purpose. At that
point, JSON/REST is by far the better protocol.
Anyway, I'm going to get out of this. Your original question was
whether EGL can handle web services without WSDLs and the answer is
unequivocally yes. Everything else is just another exercise in wordplay.
Joe
