Indeed, and this is why I think "RESTful" APIs are a huge problem - they're largely undefined. We have SOAP for defining these things formally without the need to worry about implementation differences. Unfortunately it was essentially abandoned because it was too complicated and excessive. It would be really interesting to see something SOAP-like with some more modern features and made a bit simpler.
> I'm sorry, did you just suggest something SOAP-like with more features?
I suspect that where you seem to have read "more {modern features}" but ultramancool meant "{more modern} features".
That is, I think the intent was that the features of the otherwise SOAP-like thing would be more modern than the features of SOAP, not that SOAP-like thing would have more features than SOAP and that those additional features would be modern.
Indeed, this is a correct assessment. Sorry about my poor phrasing. In particular I was thinking things like using the HTTP protocol correctly in a similar manner to more "modern" RESTful APIs, removing some of the unnecessary things and allowing for alternatives to XML like json for size and ease of access from web platforms.
Uhm, I mentioned that in my post. Thanks for re-iterating? Personally, I thought it was pretty simple, but I come from a land of CORBA. I don't think the ultimate solution for "this structure is too complicated" should be "fuck structure altogether" though. Rather, we should try to arrive at a simpler structure.
Indeed, and this is why I think "RESTful" APIs are a huge problem - they're largely undefined. We have SOAP for defining these things formally without the need to worry about implementation differences. Unfortunately it was essentially abandoned because it was too complicated and excessive. It would be really interesting to see something SOAP-like with some more modern features and made a bit simpler.