While WSDL is often derided for being simply awful, it does provide developers with a standards-based programmatic way to know how to invoke services. The Java developer community is finally seeing some advancement in the tools to work with WSDL. For instance, it is possible to look at a WSDL document and compare it to the unit tests of the services. The comparison shows the amount of test coverage a developer has on the deployed services.

Some tools such as Eviware's soapUI 2.0 are delivering code coverage estimates while developers use the tool to build test suites. Other tools like BEA WebLogic Workshop 10.3 (now in preview release) are focusing on graphic utilities to work with WSDL.

Maybe these tools will extend SOAP-based Web service viability as a universal remoting capability for a little while longer. If it isn't SOAP and WSDL, then what is it? REST, XML-RPC, FastInfoset, what?

-Frank