It sounds like I will be crabby on my posts this week. Although I am not seeing axis or IBM Web Services for the first time, I cannot stop myself from being horribly surprised by the programming model. I will not compain about all the times the environment (Web Sphere Studio 5.1 or test integration server crashes for unknown reasons). I simply cannot understand how they expect a developper to be working with tons of generated code, which has even a few bugs... like this line :

mc.setProperty(com.ibm.ws.webservices.engine.MessageContext.PARAM_MAXOCCURS_NOT1, _set2)

   It gets generated in the SOAPBindingStub when working with unbounded arrays as return type, but it seems that MessageContext has no such field...

   Not too long ago, I was looking at some interop problems one of my customers had, and we found ourselves forced to deal with a huge amount of generated client side generated source code to be able to pass a username and password for authentication (the version of the tools we were using simply dropped authentication by username and password when they added support for oasis...)

My main problem is not why there are a few bugs (even if they are at a very basic level and should definitely not be there if anyone is going to be using the tools in the real world), but that the bugs are in generated code, which will be regenerated when one makes changes to the source of the bean the service is built from. This means that the bug will have to be fixed manually zillions of times during the development process !!! and I have not even started to talk about maintaining the service after it is deployed... and it is not something that happens on 1 generated file, but a big number (serialization/deserialization classes, binding stub, proxy, service interface, helper classes, meta data, and other bizarre things) 

   XML Web Services are built on protocols and interoperability specifications, and the mapping between an object model and a service model should be built as a framework that encapsulates the generic way of mapping the two worlds, or on a new programming model totally built for services (message contract, service contract, channels, ports...etc.).

   That is the way Microsoft is dealing with the problem, and I think they are right in doing so. the asmx model offers an extensible easy way to map the object world to the message world, and takes care of mapping the whole thing into xsd and wsdl. This model is still OO, but it works for the OO developer. with Visual Studio 2005, and later with Indigo, the service programming model gets its implementation as a framework.

   Between the two programming models, my choice is definitely made.

    As much as I have noticed, for once, a great show of sympathy and support from almost everyone in the Arab and muslim worlds for the french hostages in Iraq, I see in the message they are projecting some confused and ambiguous position. They seem to say it is wrong because "France is our Friend, and the issue is about its internal affairs".

   I am really sorry, but I can't view the world in that way. It is not about a government being "our" friend or enemy, but about innocent human being being held hostage... What difference does it make if they are French, Americans, Israelis, Australians, Spanish, or my next door neighbor ? I believe that we have seen in the last few years many more atrocious terror actions, and those same people have not taken positions as strong as they are doing this week. I hope it is a change of stand, but they should make clear it is not just becquse the 2 journalists are French. Every sensible and sensitive human being should be vocal about refusing terror in all its forms. I have great sympathy for the Palestinian people and their just cause, but I believe they have done so many terrorist acts in the last few years that I can not justify by any rational reasoning. There is absolutely nothing that can justify killing people taking a bus, sitting in a cafe, shopping at a market, or dancing in a night club. There is also nothing to justify killing people in their homes, terrorist acts the israeli government has commited many times, the american government has commited in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places.

   What is it that is causing so many fights, usually linked to politics? I dream of a world with no borders, no nations, no patriotism, and where ethnicity, culture and religion are enriching factors for everyone... But I know it is just a dream... until so many others share it...

   Although many might be reporting Microsoft's Friday announcement as bad or mitigated news, I only see in it great news. Here is my tqke qt the issues :

1. It is reassuring to know that what matters most to me as a developer and architect, i.e. Avalon and Indigo, are on track and going to be released in 2006 as previously announced. As for WinFS, and away from the hype, even if I did consider it interesting to deal with the amount of data that we will be faced with whithin the Longhorn timeframe, it is not as important to me as the other two tenets, especially if search is, as promissed, enhanced to a level where it becomes really efficient. here is how I view the three technologies :

• Indigo : if there is something that will change the world of computing and make the vision that Rafal Lukawiecki calls "pervasive integration" happen, it is the "Service Orientation". Off course Microsoft has been leading in the world of Web Services (asmx and WSE), but not until "Indigo" will we have the tools that allow us to start fullfilling that vision. It is the first framework that allows us to thing, design and implements in terms of SOA concepts (Data Contract, Service Contract, abstracting the services from the channels and transports). If there is any technology I am eager to see released as soon as possible, it is Indigo. This technology is really what will make development much better, and allow for the richest feature model through a coherent, mangeable model based on SOA.
• Avalon : Even though the most talked about features of Avalon are not necessarily very important to me, I am very happy they are included in the Longhorn release : media and UI unification, vector based graphics, higher shell integration, unification between thin client and rich client, ...etc. These will make applications look and feel different, but will take time before becoming mainstream, and thus are not as time sensitive.  However, what I would rather see happening as soon as possible, is a model where design is truely separate from code. that will save me and the developers I work with an incredible amount of time.
• WinFS : Although I am probably not the best person to discuss the importance of rows and columns, I see WinFS as being a very interesting way to unify various Data Formats, but I remain convinced that with or without WinFS, our documents will still live in folders for quite some some time, which means that I don't see it as a time sensitive issue. at the same time, and with Yukons support for managed types and XML types, I don't see what would stop our applications that use or can make use of large quantities of document to store those in the database. We are not yet at the phase where developers are doing it and in bad need for a better framework. I even see the delay as beneficial, because it may well trigger more custom developped solutions, and thus real world experience that will guide the final format of WinFS. I will not discuss Object Spaces here, because I truely don't see that technology to be either important or even beneficial, simply because I don't like mapping messages and objects (although I do use such an approach sometimes, I prefer not to have it formalized as if it was a best practice). The only valid reason I can think of that would make WinFS an urgently needed technology is the need for quickly finding information that resides in documents in the huge number and size we probably will have on our hard disks (or for that matter, in remote storage as well) by 2006. That is why I was very relieved to hear that the new search functionality is going to be part of Longhorn.

Without going into political or historical polemic, I just am proud of the scientific and artistic production of the Moorish Andalusian civilisation. I was one where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in peace and harmony for centuries, and it has produced some of the most beautiful works of arts ever made.

It suffices to go to the Alcazar Reales in Sevilla, or to the Mosk-Cathedral in Cordoba, or even better, to the Alhambra in Granada to be conviced ...

If I claim such heritage, it is because I have no other understanding of the history of my people and country except being the civilisation that started with the "Berbers", and the glory of Hannibal, Jugurtha and Juba. Even then and way before, our land was a meeting place for civilisations and a melting pot for cultures likethose of the Phoenicians and the Romans. Way later, whith the arrival of the Arabs, it was still the people of our land, the berbers that made the western islamic civilisation that took over Andalussia (now southern Spain) and made it one of the most flourishing civilisations in the world ...

So that is the begining of mty tales, which will be an expression of the views of a guy proud to be a Moor ...