Web Services War Stories

Friday late afternoon is probably not the best time to start a discussion like this. But some of my thoughts are extensions of the XMLSERVICE discussion that has been going strong on the RPG list this week. This discussion is for Web Service producers and consumers.

One problem I'd like to address is the cost and complexity of "recommended" Web Services architectures based on WSDL and SOAP. If you go to study the WSDL & SOAP interface specifications there's a good chance that you'll be asked to first get a good understanding on XML, XML Name Spaces, XML Schema Definitions, & XML Paths as prerequisites. Then WSDL. Then SOAP. Then how they all come together in Web Services architecture.

I guess it's not a requirement to study the underlying interfaces and specifications. You could just license the appropriate middleware, frameworks, toolkits, and runtime environments from Microsoft and IBM. I haven't done that.

Web services appear to be the vehicle du jour for getting otherwise disparate systems to inter-operate. I'm facing a problem right now concerning that, which I'd like to share if this discussion catches on. But first I'd like to ask if you have general thoughts or opinions or stories or travails about integrating disparate systems through Web Services? What do you think of WSDL and SOAP and associated frameworks?

-Nathan