
Stop SOAP - llambda
http://stopsoap.com/
======
kingofspain
As someone who recently had to deal with a system with two different
(incompatible) SOAP services, I fully endorse the message behind this site.

Luckily my exposure seems to be restricted to legacy and enterprisey stuff
nowadays.

------
i2pi
Hi - I'm Josh - the guy behind Stop SOAP.

There is no political intent behind this site. It is meant to be a joke. A
joke with a grain of truth.

Backstory: I was waiting for a conference call, saw that stopsoap wasn't
registered and put this together in 15min.

Deeper backstory: I'm the co-founder & CEO of Simple.com. We deal with many
SOAP APIs. The upside is that SOAP provides very clear specifications as to
how the API is supposed to work. The downside, is that things rarely work as
expected. It is frustrating, but such is life in banking.

On a more serious note, We're Hiring. If you'd like to work at Simple, where
we replace you bank & give you clean REST APIs to your finances, check us out:
<http://simple.com>

~~~
zerostar07
Well, you may soon be the accidental hero who saved the world from slippery
things.

------
4ad
Related: The S stands for Simple,
[http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-...](http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-
s-stands-for-simple) and Please drop the SOAP,
<http://thecoffman.com/2011/01/25/please-drop-the-soap> .

~~~
pilif
protocols with simple (or lightweight) in their name usually are anything but.

~~~
dexen
Not a coincidence. Simple to implement != simple to explain to your boss (
_`it's standard industry practice'_ ). The name is meant to sell the standard
to non-techies.

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zerostar07
Finally, a legit movement for us non-americans!! How are we supposed to
protest against this? cover our pages with bubbles?

~~~
cgh
You must stop bathing for one week and blog about the results.

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seanalltogether
I'll admit to being completely ignorant about the benefits of using SOAP to
communicate between servers. However I can say that for server->client
communication it is the worse data representation I've ever had to work with
and I genuinely hope we see the end of it. JSON maybe not be perfect, but it's
so much better at delivering a structured data model then xml is.

~~~
nirvdrum
I think I'd like JSON as a data representation a lot more if schemas for it
were more prevalent. I've noticed it's a lot harder to generate valid JSON --
or rather a lot harder to escape data. With XML, this is fairly trivial.
Granted, my use case is considerably different from most.

The other idea from SOAP I'd love to see applied to ReST is a descriptor
document for the API. Given how poorly many ReST APIs are documented, I do
miss the good 'ol WSDL. Plus, it gave me some measure of security that the API
didn't change.

~~~
sciurus
Does WADL provide what you liked about WSDL?

<http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl/>

~~~
nirvdrum
I haven't heard of this before. But I'll be checking it out. Thanks for the
info.

------
mmaunder
More tragic than HN becoming an advocacy site (the beginning of Slashdot's
demise) is how many comments here don't get the joke.

~~~
levesque
Since when is being a web programmer a prerequisite to participating on HN?

~~~
simias
I think what the OP meant is that this story is meant as a parody of the
avalanche of "sopa is evil" posts lately. Whether you know what SOAP is or not
is beyond the point.

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pvarangot
I'm against Stop SOAP. SOAP is a jobs-protocol.

In the current economy, consultants specialized in fixing convoluted web
applications need us more than ever.

~~~
T_S_
I agree. We need SOAP to stop the JSON loving bit thieves trying to steal our
intellectual overhead (IO). Don't drop the SOAP!

------
orblivion
I was thinking, Spanish people must be wondering, "what do all these nerds
have against soup?".

~~~
TobbenTM
And all english-speaking people must think, "what do all these nerds have
against soap?".

~~~
vijayr
these nerds - they rarely shower !!!

------
yock
Someone went searching for "Stop SOPA" and discovered something brilliant from
their typo.

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llambda
I'm wondering how it's technically possible for a submission with over 500 up-
votes to be flagged to the point of being pushed off the front page;
interestingly, it was not a gradual departure, as you'd expect, but rather it
seemed to move instantly, from the top spot, to number 33 or 34, on the second
page.

I think it's terribly important that it be possible for the community to
reflect, critically: SOPA is a serious issue, one we should all be concerned
about, and more importantly taking action against. However, there is a point
where it becomes an echo chamber, where we are preaching to the choir. Having
nearly every submission be yet another "X is blacked out" does not necessarily
correlate to communicating to our lawmakers that we do not want this
legislation to pass.

Clearly this subtle, yet provocative submission's intent to communicate such a
critique was understood by a number of people. I'm still unsure how it ended
up bumped so quickly, but whatever the case, I hope the point wasn't entirely
lost on those of you who didn't appreciate it.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I suspect the absolutely dismal state of the comments helped to get it flagged
into oblivion.

------
Achshar
Alright guys.. i'll admit, i dont get the joke. can any one explain? What's
happening on that site and why do i see xml? (yes, i am still learning new
stuff, like everyone else)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
SOAP is a specification for exposing remote procedure calls via a web service.
The client executes a SOAP request by making an HTTP Post request against a
URL with an XML request body that specifies what remote procedure to call and
what parameters to pass into it. The service, in turn, sends an HTTP response
with an XML body that contains the return value from the procedure call.

SOAP services also usually include a WSDL, which is alternately said to stand
for Web Service Definition List, Web Service Definition Language, or Web
Service Description Language and is meant to define the methods and parameters
available to the client.

Because the whole system is so complicated, cumbersome and over-engineered,
the normal way to create a WSDL is to do it automatically using tooling.
Unfortunately, different frameworks generate different and often mutually
incompatible and non-interoperable WSDLs. So, for example, a .NET SOAP client
might not be able to consume a WSDL generated by a Java framework.

The S in SOAP originally stood for "Simple", but the protocol is anything but.

~~~
Achshar
Yes that comment really helps but if i am getting it right, it is something
like JSON, right? like JSON is used in public API's and all sorts of server-
client communication. Any particular reason to take SOAP against something
like JSON?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Not exactly.

SOAP is a _protocol specification for executing remote procedure calls_ over a
network. SOAP uses XML for its message formatting and data serialization, and
(usually) HTTP for its network protocol.

JSON, on the other hand, is a _data serialization format_ rather than a remote
procedure call format. It is sometimes used in web services - especially
services based on Representational state transfer (REST) - to pass structured
data between the client and server, but it is not a remote procedure call
protocol in itself.

REST, in turn, is a method for designing a web service so that its
functionality is accessed the same way that HTTP works. In REST, the service
is organized into _resources_ and _methods_ , with resources corresponding to
URLs and methods corresponding to the HTTP request methods: chiefly GET, POST,
PUT and DELETE.

If you want to access a resource, you issue an HTTP GET request on the URL
corresponding to that resource. If you want to create a resource, you issue an
HTTP POST request on the URL corresponding to that resource with the data you
want to post in the request body. If you want to update an existing resource,
you issue an HTTP PUT request on the corresponding URL with the updated data.
If you want to delete a resource, you issue an HTTP DELETE request on the
corresponding URL.

Recently, many REST web services are designed to accept request data in JSON
format and to send responses in JSON as well. Since web services are mainly
consumed by client programs (rather than by humans browsing), JSON allows for
a generic data structure that the client can consume and parse more easily
than HTML, which is designed more specifically to structure documents.

------
ghc
Finally a movement I can get behind!

~~~
wladimir
Well in contrary to the SOPA people, the SOAP people aren't trying to forcibly
push SOAP on all of us with laws and treaties. There's enough alternatives.
Let them use SOAP :p

~~~
markokocic
Unless you have to integrate with their "mission critical" SOAP based
"enterprise solution".

------
harrisreynolds
Unfortunately I spent a couple years building web services tools in 2002,3. I
have long since repented. Love the "S stands for Simple" link... fantastic
dialog!

------
umjames
As someone who is about to work with a client's enterprisey SOAP API, I really
wish I could upvote this article multiple times.

------
tar
REST in peace, SOAP.

------
etaty
One does not simply get some REST.

~~~
simondlr
There is a "REST in peace" joke there as well.

------
xbryanx
Have you considered Dr Bronner's? -
<http://www.drbronner.com/pdf/drbronner_32oz_Pep.pdf>

------
AznHisoka
Is there even 1 legit reason why someone would use SOAP over REST, aside from
legacy?

~~~
mindcrime
<http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-soap-when-to-use-each>

------
abailin
This is great - put on some tweet/fb like/+1 buttons so we can help spread the
word.

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aangjie
Almost thought it was SOPA.. misspelled article..:-P Agree.. SOAP is way to
verbose....and annoying to read manually while debugging...

------
pedrosanta
lawl

------
jburwell
Friends don't let friends do SOAP.

------
yuvalo
oh i see what you did there

*sorry, reddit is down

------
Kesty
We should use SOPA againt SOAP and ask internet providers acroos the globe to
block access to every server that runs a SOAP webservice.

------
binarray2000
..."Don worked with Microsoft and Dave Winer to create the original SOAP
specification in 1998.":

<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/de/Box/default.mspx>

Actually, swell guy. I'm still wondering how he created such a mess.

------
tomelders
I am not Barrack Obama, and I endorse this message.

------
onedewd
So much efforts to stop law proposal X. Which is great.

What about the idea of a Open-USA or other Open-Iran where a true Meta-
Democracy or whatever open society model is implemented where all efforts
would be PRO something instead of hateful stuff like protesting.

This laws are proposed by lobbies that go against the interest of 99% of the
persons. How is that even conceivable ?

All this big companies opposing could create a github project for open
government and then elect a person that implements that.

