More evidence that the tune is changing (re web services)
More evidence that the tune is changing. No longer are we the unwashed masses yearning to be taught the true path to enlightenment by the C developers, now they’re pleading with us to help them work around limits in their crippled environments. Heh. Now don’t go overboard. But the self-deprecation is appreciated. One of our mottos is It’s Even Worse Than It Appears. We are all members of the Church of Murphy, whether we use static or dynamic environments. 
[Scripting News]
MSDN: Don Box on the Importance of Being WSDL
Despite the years I spent trying to make SOAP a standard way for programs to communicate over the Internet; I find that raw SOAP and XML are at odds with all of these compilers I am now using. I am told that if you give me machine-readable contract definitions, my compiler can help me talk to your Web services. A lot.
If you don’t give me a machine-readable contract, then I am going to have to write one of these weird-looking WSDL files by hand, and that always makes me cranky. I understand that writing WSDL makes you cranky too, but I’ll bet if you wrote the WSDL once and put it on your Web site, everyone else would just use it, and no one would ever need to write that WSDL again. And if you wrote a ten-line WS-Inspection or DISCO file to go along with it, I could find out about all of your other services too.
I know that WSDL isn’t perfect. God knows I tried to make it better prior to publication. Luckily, the W3C just launched a WSDL working group and it looks like the community at large has the will to clean it up, just as SOAP was cleaned up once it got the attention of a large community of practitioners and experts. In fact, SOAPBuilders is running a WSDL bake-off in February that surely will yield some progress on this front.
I also know that writing WSDL for your script-based Web services is more work for you, but your suffering would benefit thousands or more developers anxious to use your stuff. And just think of the nice things they will say about you once you made their lives easier.
And not under their breath.
