[MOBY-dev] BioMOBY Asynchronous Service Call Proposal v2.2 - <wsa:Action> tag missing for GetResourceProperty requests

[Paul Gordon]

I agree with Tom: the most important part of using a layer like WS is 
the features you *haven't* thought of.  Logical separation of program 
parts always incurs an overhead, but 1) frees the developer from 
tinkering with a "solved" problem, and 2) allows him/her to benefit from 
features they hadn't anticipated.  I'll be really happy when a security 
payer can be automagically added to MOBY via some WS protocol...

With regards to Martin's mail, I don't think usurping the Service type 
is a good idea (if I understand the idea correctly, which I may not).  
The Service Type Ontology is supposed to describe the service in 
biological terms, the fact that it executes asynchronously is a 
technical consideration (imagine doubling the size of the ontology 
because one half has to inherit from moby-async :-P) . 

> Mark Wilkinson wrote:
>   
>> v.v. the political statement:  I strongly agree with Martin, in part, and  
>> somewhat agree with him in another part :-)
>>
>> My personal opinion on the Pseudo-Web Services approach that MOBY uses is  
>> that it has been more of a barrier than a benefit.  I don't think this is  
>> a consequence of MOBY not using all of SOAP/WSDL, I feel it is because the  
>> WS architecture itself is not quite as useful as it was marketed to be in  
>> past years.  In this regard, moving toward a REST-style architecture for  
>> "MOBY 2" is something I am strongly in favour of because it seems like the  
>> right thing to do, especially in the emergent Semantic Web world; the fact  
>> that it also moves us closer to the S-MOBY architecture is just icing :-)
>>     
>
> One thing to consider here is that you're potentially missing out on the 
> additional capabilities you can inherit from a web service platform. I 
> tend to agree with both you and Martin on this (Martin has sat next to 
> me in an office for some years and so should know my generally low 
> opinion of the current state of the web service world!).
>
> Where WS can really come into their own is their ability to add aspects 
> such as security and robust message transport without any additional 
> effort from the MOBY community. It might be worth taking a look at the 
> work we've been doing with OMII-UK (the umbrella organization in the UK 
> which has in the last year absorbed both myGrid and OGSA-DAI). They 
> (we?) have a container configuration with support for WS-Security 
> (certificate based authentication) and will support its use in escience 
> projects.
>
> Use of WS 'standards' incurs a cost, both in initial development time 
> and in runtime complexity. It potentially reaps a benefit if you go on 
> to make use of the full suite (or a substantial subset) of additional 
> capabilities such as security, WSRF style session management, full 
> message description and the like. Before dropping WS invocation support 
> entirely you need to consider the potential future requirements that it 
> might fill more easily than a home grown implementation. There is of 
> course always the political aspect - we've already had people say "we 
> can't use taverna as, although it works and does what we want, it isn't 
> a 'standard'". Sad but true.
>
> This isn't an exclusive choice of course, you could (and maybe should) 
> have a simple REST-like invocation interface alongside a more complex 
> and potentially extensible SOAP based one.
>
> Just my thoughts,
>
> Tom
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