> knowing what a "correct input" is to web systems is very difficult
I cut my teeth programming an XML web service using soap and while I can't say that it was as drop-dead simple as a restful HTTP web api these days, between the wsdl and the uddi, it sure was convenient to be able to know as a client what methods were being exposed and what inputs they expected.
Sometimes I wish the w3c had not required XML for those web services ,so that we could do that with json plus whatever add-ons can make it have an enforceable schema like XML. WSDLs were underrated.
I agree. It was nice being able to grab the WSDL from say, a .NET web service, and run your maven script on your Java app to generate the interop boilerplate and just start coding against a type-safe interface.
I cut my teeth programming an XML web service using soap and while I can't say that it was as drop-dead simple as a restful HTTP web api these days, between the wsdl and the uddi, it sure was convenient to be able to know as a client what methods were being exposed and what inputs they expected.
Sometimes I wish the w3c had not required XML for those web services ,so that we could do that with json plus whatever add-ons can make it have an enforceable schema like XML. WSDLs were underrated.