Girthy Protocol Stacks

GXA (A.K.A., WS-*) is creating a girthy protocol stack, that is, the distance around the circumference of the protocol stack seems to grow daily.

The girth for the base internet protocol stack was pretty small: UDP, TCP, DNS, etc. - The cohesion within the protocol was high. However, the coupling between the protocols was moderate-to-high. That is, there were a significant number of times when a given protocol called out a "unique binding" rather than calling out "a requirement for a concern".

In the world wide web, the girth was minimal: HTTP, URI, HTML, etc. In the world wide grid, the girth seems to be rather large: SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, WS-Inspection, WS-Transaction, WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging, etc.

Girthy protocols worry me only when they are mandatory. If I can choose the specific protocols that I want to use in the stack, rather than having to accommodate each layer in the stack I have increased flexibility and decreased the problems associated with girthy protocol stacks.

Protocols become mandatory when the cohesion between protocols is high. This occurs when a protocol SPECIFIES that you MUST use another specific protocol. This is what I call a "unique binding". It occurs all the time in the web services protocols. Rather than stating that one protocol requires the remedy of some concern (e.g. addressing), the protocol calls out a specification by name. In these cases, we end up creating "protocol frameworks".

The creation of protocol frameworks that are bound and versioned via a profile (like WS Basic Profile) may be required given the state of the art of protocol design. However, as we begin to adopt the ws-* stack we must be aware of the cohesion and versioning issues that will arise in the future.