Call it Web and they will buy it

Nick Gall, VP Gartner, complains that Middleware vendors simply slapped a “Web” label onto their overcomplicated products and, thanks to W3C’s blessing, managed to create yet another wave of hype:

Unfortunately, Web Services, at least the WS- style, are “Web” in name only. While WS- enables tunneling over HTTP (used merely as an XML message transport), in almost every important aspect, WS- violates (or at best ignores) the architectural principles of the Web as described in the W3C’s Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One and in Tim Berners-Lee’s personal design notes.

It is my position that the W3C should extricate itself from further direct work on SOAP, WDSL, or any other WS- specifications and redirect its resources into evangelizing and standardizing identifiers, formats, and protocols that exemplify Web architectural principles. This includes educating enterprise application architects how to design “applications” that are “native” web applications.

And WS-* is not the only case where stuff that has almost nothing to do with the Web got hyped after getting a “Web” label slapped on. (Web Ontologies?)

Meanwhile, Web innovation continues to happen elsewhere.

(via Bill de hÕra)