Sam Ruby continues his patient evangelism
and has released a new essay entitled Evolution of the Weblog APIs that is a follow up to a
blog
entry posted over 8 months ago. The MetaWeblog API has since
evolved with the introduction RSS 2.0, and this lead to a new
RFC.
My questions on that RFC have gone unanswered, and I have expanded upon them in this essay.
Sam's essay includes a detailed demonstration of the limitations and short-comings of XML-RPC and how ugly it can get trying to extend it. In the essay Sam details an XML-RPC request that is 43 lines of copius XML-RPC tags to express and translates it to 8 lines using HTTP headers and RSS.
Its black and white arguments like these that made me lose favor with XML-RPC and the like and develop RESTful leanings. REST architectural principles combined with SOAP or RSS are remarkably simple, elegent and extensible. Especially when you are prepared to cope with change. It puzzles me that anyone can still insist that XML-RPC is somehow simpler or better suited.
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