Usefulness of WSDL

[Lisa Dusseault <[e-mail]>]

I see WSDL proposed for some spec in the IETF every so often but  
nobody's ever explained to me what it solves.  James Snell who has  
more experience than me in the matter wrote:

"Those who are familiar with my history with IBM should know that I  
was once a *major* proponent of the WS-* approach. I was one of the  
original members of the IBM Emerging Technologies Toolkit team, I  
wrote so many articles on the subject during my first year with IBM  
that I was able to pay a down payment on my house without touching a  
dime of savings or regular paycheck, and I was involved in most of  
the internal efforts to design and prototype nearly all of the WS-*  
specifications. However, over the last two years I haven’t written a  
single line of code that has anything to do with WS-*. The reason for  
this change is simple: when I was working on WS-*, I never once  
worked on an application that solved a real business need. Everything  
I wrote back then were demos. Now that I’m working for IBM’s WebAhead  
group, building and supporting applications that are being used by  
tens of thousands of my fellow IBMers, I haven’t come across a single  
use case where WS-* would be a suitable fit."

Anybody got counter-arguments or is this a reasonable indictment?

Lisa

[from James' blog: http://www.snellspace.com/wp/?p=798]