Related link:  A new piece by Carlos Perez suggests that SOAP is
comatose, and REST (HTTP GET/POST/PUT/DELETE + XML) is waking
up. Reading it left me a bit nostalgic, and wondering what might
have happened if SOAP had never appeared.  Yes, I know
counterfactuals are ridiculous, and that the computing culture
of the time definitely drove a lot of the decisions that went
into making SOAP the [triumphant success | utter debacle] that
it is today. Perez suggests that REST may be emerging from the
train wreck as a success, but I wonder if it’s at least possible
to think of a world where SOAP never happened and technologies
like REST and BEEP had greater opportunity to flower.  From my
(admittedly jaundiced, biased, etc.) perspective, SOAP and its
ever-growing family of specifications emerged because vendors
needed something more concrete than design services to sell
their customers, and because the hype wave around XML had
promised too much that couldn’t be delivered immediately. XML
provided one layer of data str