Here is one brilliant, funny and highly recommended reading on REST vs. WS-* webservices.

This is one of the most enjoyable technology readings I've had in a long, long time.

REST vs. SOAP Parable

Every now and then some voice of reason raises up above the hype hypnotised crowd and offers the alternative truth to ones that have not been completely brain washed.

This is the one like that. Furthermore, it seems that there few others that have resisted the hypnosis.

To quote some comments on this article from the server side:


... Reading the above replies [SOAP defenders] I started doubting where I lived. On the Moon? Oh no, not at all. Looking around, I'm still here on the lovely Earth ;)There were so many 'if's and 'in the future', and so on, that those guys need to be brought back to this reality. ...

... SOAP -- the EJB of XML. Give up the ghost. ...



and from the article as well:



... I'm new to web services but recently spent a lot of time looking at options for a new system. There was no direction given and no precedence for SOA in the area I work. At first this seemed like a disadvantage. I now appreciate the option to completely avoid SOAP RPC as a luxury most people don't have. It's a complete mystery to me why so much energy remains behind the 'worst available option' for the vast majority of purposes. ...

...
There's so much energy behind the "worst available option", I think, because of a fundamental genetic abnormality in about 90% of the population. The more I see of the current crop of frameworks and standards and specifications, and the fanboys cheering them on, the more I despair… ;-)

By the way, Rusty, that was brilliant.
...



I personally used to fight hard on this blog for the same common sense approach to webservices. I got tired of it because it was an uphill battle.
SOA-SOAP-ESB is such a powerful attention grabber and almost an IT dogma that you risk being marginalized if you speak too critically of it.

However, it is good to know now I am not alone in raising the voice against something that will utlimately hurt us in the same way that many other over-engineered technologies did.