Nothing like a rant for a first post to a blog! :) I guess its more of a random thought - I'll probably have many of these throughout the project...
Ahh, the irony of research - the more time spent researching a specific topic, the further behind you fall when it comes to knowing current technologies. After doing some necessary reviewing of the recent advances of the PhyloWS group for this project, I have found I have much to learn. For years, I have been studying Web service compositions (specifically the adaptation problem of WSCs in dynamic environments) - a very relevant, useful, and (dare I say) neat idea. The problem is that the support system still uses old (but still working) working standards. I have been so heavily dependant on the BPEL standard for WSCs, which uses WSDL 1.1 exclusively, that I have either overlooked or dismissed the new (well not really new) RESTful style Web service (or WSDL 2.0 for that matter). Sure, I have been curious and have read several papers on the topic, but still used what I had been used to in my empirical experiments in research. I have grown fat and lazy on this style almost to the point of being stubborn!
I still like the WSDL 1.1 paradigm and think it still has a place but I know that many do not and I must adapt accordingly, perhaps starting with this project. Luckily, SAWSDL works for both 1.1 and 2.0, so this can be an easy transition. I am familiar with SAWSDL4J, but I also hear Woden4SAWSDL may prove useful as well. This will give me a chance to both code using the tools for which I am accustomed in 1.1, while gradually moving in the WSDL 2.0 direction (but there is still no . I have been told it is much easier too - we'll see!
That said, we need to stick to SOAP paradigm for now, as adding semantics to RESTful web services is still an ongoing issue...
