Adam Bosworth, usually a staunch supporter of SOAP and the rest of WS-Mess, makes an interesting sidebar statement in the last paragraph of his recent post about PC’s and Media Revamped:

I have a posted comment about just using XML over HTTP. Yes. I'm trying, right now to figure out if there is any real justification for the WS-* standards and even SOAP in the face of the complexity when XML over HTTP works so well. Reliable messaging would be such a justification, but it isn’t there. Eventing might be such a justification, but it isn’t there either and both specs are tied up in others in a sort of spec spaghetti. So, I'm kind of a skeptic of the value apart from the toolkits. They do deliver some value, (get a WSDL, instant code to talk to service), but what I'm really thinking about is whether there can’t be a much simpler kindler way to do this.

If you've followed Bosworth before, you'll notice that this is a pretty big statement.

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