[Biojava-l] GO web service

[Patrick McConnell]

>WooHa!  I think I learned my lesson from the last go round like Ewan.  I'm
>not touching this with a ten foot pole.

Could you explain a bit about why so that we can get an idea about what we
are getting into?  I'd hate to start down a path that led nowhere.

Thanks : - )

-Patrick





"Dickson, Mike" <mdickson@netgenics.com> on 08/30/2002 04:10:32 PM

To:    "'Patrick McConnell'" <MCCon012@mc.duke.edu>, Simon Brocklehurst
       <simon.brocklehurst@cambridgeantibody.com>
cc:    Ewan Birney <birney@ebi.ac.uk>, Brian Gilman
       <gilmanb@genome.wi.mit.edu>, biojava-l@biojava.org

Subject:    RE: [Biojava-l] GO web service


WooHa!  I think I learned my lesson from the last go round like Ewan.  I'm
not touching this with a ten foot pole.

BTW, I have experience building commercial systems with both CORBA and Web
Services.  I will simply say that arguing about protocols is a waste of
time.  They're both just tools.

Mike

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick McConnell [mailto:MCCon012@mc.duke.edu]
> Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 3:30 PM
> To: Simon Brocklehurst
> Cc: Ewan Birney; Brian Gilman; biojava-l@biojava.org
> Subject: Re: [Biojava-l] GO web service
>
>
> Web services are not good for object-oriented distributed systems because
> web services do not describe behavior well, they describe data well.
> CORBA
> is terrible with data because it doesn't interoperate with other systems.
> You can build the most beatiful, elegent RMI based system in Java, and I
> will never be able to access that functionality from my .NET client, or
my
> perl client, or my LISP client, or my whatever.  For many, this is fine
> because they are working within a single business and have control over
> both the client and the server.  This isn't the case in bioinformatics,
> were cross-organizational collaboration is a necessity.
>
> I think very few bioinformaticians are interested in sophisticated
> distributed systems.  Instead, they just want to be able to get at data
> and
> tools easily.  I think Web services will do that for them better than any
> CORBA based technology.  Am I wrong here?
>
> I have heard the argument before, and I still don't buy that web services
> is just CGI done a tiny bit better.  CGI and web services have quite
> similar qualities and uses, but the ability to strongly type data in XML
> and to dynamically discover operations/data types makes web services
quite
> a bit better.  Both of these are keys to successfully building flows of
> services, which is were I think web services really transcend all
previous
> technologies.  Now, if we could just get a flow implementation from a
> major
> vendor, we could start building complex tools from simple web services
and
> really start using the power of web services : - )
>
> -Patrick
>
>
>
>
>
> Simon Brocklehurst <simon.brocklehurst@CambridgeAntibody.com>@biojava.org
> on 08/30/2002 03:57:29 PM
>
> Sent by:    biojava-l-admin@biojava.org
>
>
> To:    Ewan Birney <birney@ebi.ac.uk>
> cc:    Brian Gilman <gilmanb@genome.wi.mit.edu>, Patrick McConnell
>        <MCCon012@mc.duke.edu>, biojava-l@biojava.org
>
> Subject:    Re: [Biojava-l] GO web service
>
>
> Ewan Birney wrote:
>
> > I remember all these discussions from those great CORBA days. Boy am I
> > staying away from this for the moment... (too scared frankly!)
> >
>
> I don't blame ya...
>
> I don't want to be negative (it's not useful), but I suspect not
> everyone out there is too experienced at building distributed computer
> systems.  My concern is that this (and other) talk about Web Services
> may leave lots of people with the impression that Web Services are
> something they're not.
>
> Two things people need to know:
>
> 1) Building great distributed computer systems is hard.
>
> 2) If you're gonna do it, CORBA/J2EE over IIOP/RMI/RMI over IIOP are
> orders of magnitude more useful than Web Services over http - assuming
> you want to build a distributet, object-orientated (and possible
> Enterprise-class) computer systems.
>
> Right now, Web Services is nothing more than CGI done a tiny bit
> better.  That's fine if all you want to do is run Blast (in fact, Web
> Services is really good things like that).  But they're not good if you
> want to build an even slightly sophisticated distributed computer
> system.
>
> I truly don't understand the excitement about Web Services -
> pleeeaaaasssee no-one say they're really good for tunelling through
> firewalls, I can't be doin' with that old chestnut ;-)
>
> Ho hum... just my two cents etc...
>
> Simon
> --
> Simon M. Brocklehurst, Ph.D.
> Director of Informatics & Robotics
> Cambridge Antibody Technology
> The Science Park, Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, UK
> http://www.CambridgeAntibody.com/
> mailto:simon.brocklehurst@CambridgeAntibody.com
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