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  Friday, May 23, 2003 

APIs, protocols, and rogue plumbers

harry tuttle

The inexorable logic of Web services sets aside APIs in favor of protocols. XML messages flowing through the pipes enact those protocols. Anyone with authorized access to that plumbing will be able to monitor and inject messages quite easily, and everyone will know that's true. If B or S or V can't unclog the pipes, we'll elect Harry Tuttle, and he'll do it without even getting his hands dirty. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

This was the 35th weekly column I've written for InfoWorld, and it might be my favorite one so far.
We had a bit of a discussion about how to play the column on the cover of next week's magazine. "Web services conquer all" would likely have been tweaked, but the idea was to invoke a hot theme. A klunky phrase like "Web services" doesn't leave much maneuvering room in a short headline, though. "Protocols and rogue plumbers," a shorter version of the title that actually appears on the column in the magazine, is arguably too obscure for the cover. Of course "Harry Tuttle's Revenge" is completely obscure, but might its very oddity provoke interest? In the end it was moot, because a design change pushed the column tease off the cover. But if you have an opinion, fire away!

PS: There is still time for certain value-added reseller, V, to save me (and hundreds of other customers) the trouble of manually transferring records from bank B to service-provider S. But in a few weeks, the music will stop.

 


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