01/17/09 :: [SOA] The New Whatever World [permalink]
Miko Matsumura renamed recently its blog the "WhateverCenter" (previously known as the SOACenter) in response to Anne Thomas Manes publication of SOA's death certificate.
In a recent blog, Stefan Tilkov discusses Subbu's question about how reliable is the self relationship defined in Atom. Stefan concludes:
But in conclusion, I stand by my opinion that URIs can and should be used for identity – whatever “identity” might mean for you.
Even though Subbu keeps pounding that RFC 3986 clearly states:
URI comparison is not sufficient to determine whether two URIs identify different resources.
In other words, URI cannot be used safely for identity purposes. The method URI.equals(URI) returns an undefined result, actually, I can safely say that it returns a whatever result.
What's interesting about Stefan's response is the "Whatever" word he used. We now live in a world where any claim has merit. REST has some little snags here and there? No, not in the whatever world, you redefine your expectations to match what REST, i.e. whatever, does, and voila, you just got a whatever solution to a whatever problem. You can say anything you want, short of "gravity does not exist" and get away with it. You just need a social network of believers. The more believers, the more "truth" there is to your statement.
This whatever world is quite magical. You want to start a war, you just fudge some intelligence data, and voila. The whatever world let's you get away with it. Your product can't do SOA, no problem, define SOA as "whatever" and your product can now do SOA. SO is different from OO? No, not in the new whatever world. All this OO stuff is now SO, i.e. a class is now a service (and hence a service is a class and an operation is a method). Facts, statements such as the one from the RFC 3986? Minor annoying details, they now count far less than someone's opinion. I am sure that Bush's opinion when he started the war was that Saddam had WMDs.
What does Stefan really means by "Whatever identity means to you?" What does "I stand by my opinion that URIs can and should be used for identity"? You mean a question as essential as identity only deserves an "opinion"? Yes, but of course, as long as it has been published (on the Web) it is truthful. Isn't it?