[petercooper]

We could give a name to the language we use to define such files. It's a language that defines Web services, so perhaps Web Services Description Language? :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Services_Description_Langua...

Flippancy aside, maybe there's a need for a next generation of this that skips all the XML headaches after all.

[pfarrell]

There are no new problems, only new engineers.

I have been puzzling over this API discovery issue on my current project (building out a reporting API).

I'm starting with self documentation for developers built in, not this (admittedly admirable) goal of a machine generated API mapping layer. I think the main issue is, you're trying to generate a generic interface to something that isn't, itself, generic.

How many versions of "RESTful" have you encountered?

Building a generic interface to non-generic interfaces is the domain of software engineers. Until we have machines building both sides of this equation, there will always be a need for human intervention.

[stephen]

The problem wasn't XML itself, but the complexity they tried to encode in XML. The same sins could be committed in JSON.

JSON has just been lucky that its user base hasn't been the same enterprise architects that ruined Java.

[gluegadget]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Application_Description_Lan... ?

[petercooper]

It's still XML but that does look closer. I thought the other commenter was joking that this existed.. :-)