Simon Fell > Its just code > Web services tools currently suck

Ted Neward has a post about web service tools, and their magic wand approach of generating WSDL / services from class definitions (ala ,NET / Java ), and how that's evil etc. Then goes on to say that doc/literal is going to save us. Whilst I agree that doc/literal is generally better than rpc/encoded (assuming tools get around to supporting all of XSD, the current mismatch of partial XSD support is an interop nightmare for authoring service WSDLs) using doc/literal won't magically save you either, its just as easy in both .NET & Axis to build doc/lit services from class definitions as it is to build rpc/enc services. In fact Ted's .NET magic wand sample actually is a doc/literal service. Basically, as much as the tool vendors would like you to believe otherwise, 3 years on from the SOAP 1.1. spec, its still a tedious error prone job to build good web services.