[Biojava-l] GO web service
Ewan Birney
birney@ebi.ac.uk
Sat, 31 Aug 2002 14:05:08 +0100 (BST)
On Fri, 30 Aug 2002, Patrick McConnell wrote:
>
> >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.
Endless discussions about the pros and cons of a "standard" that everyone
wants to fit their use case/prejuidice.
Far better to do these things bottom up - build things which work, perhaps
using SOAP/CORBA/Yadda/ASN/WibblyStufff - show that it works, and abstract
out anything that looks protcoly/technology based behind interfaces so
that if WhizzyBangBang stuff in 2003 looks better, it is easy to drop in
(ie, don't make the technology drive the data model)
The "official" OMG way to do this is via UML and some buzz word about
technology free modelling, but there is still a massive tendancy for
top-down-design-by-committee, which I think just doesn't work, and frankly
the Biojava/BioPerl data model (which are reasonably in sync, give or take
the odd split location thang) is a fine way to start, and the usual
"propose idea on list, and whoever codes it wins the argument" is a far
better resolving procedure than committees
anyway - build systems which work now is my motto ;)
BTW - I recently implemented something in CORBA (C) and it was a pleasure
though getting your head around the C CORBA mapping does require drugs.
Talk is cheap. Code is what counts.
>
> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > Biojava-l mailing list - Biojava-l@biojava.org
> > http://biojava.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Biojava-l mailing list - Biojava-l@biojava.org
> > http://biojava.org/mailman/listinfo/biojava-l
>
>
>
>
>
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