Re: iPhone Rich UI

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