Getting your head around all the WS-* stuff is like trying to eat an elephant.

- Joe, commenting on Loud Thinking.

So David has pointed out the reality split between the industry led WS-* 'standards' pap and Restian principles. I deal with XML-RPC & Soap API's on a daily basis, and i find our Soap calls in particular over complex. The move from procedure call to state transfer is in sync with the natural architecture of the web. It forces you to think about your web application as an open data architecture from the offset (e.g. Delicious) and that can only be a good thing.

Did i say simple & open?

Well i've used the term mashupware a bunch of times, but Zimbra's online demo coins the phrase 'enterprise mashups'. The business model could mean a new age of SLA's between inter-dependent services, meaning folks like QOOP could ask for legal agreement from folks like Flickr, replete with uptime guarantees and service availability/quality guidelines.