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Mark Baker quotes Uche on web services:

But putting the misery of these experiences aside, I'm surprised at how little I've had to worry about SOAP. As it became clear to me that Web Services were becoming a menace to much of the goodness wrought by XML, I worried that I would be forced to do a lot of gritting my teeth at work while I accommodated clients' insistence on WS. This hasn't turned out to be the case. In several cases where WS "end points" have been suggested, I've been surprised at how easily my suggestions of a REST-like alternative are embraced (the fact that I could usually whip up running code in hours helped a lot).

There's a simple reason for this - Web Services are the new CORBA. Setting up an RPC system is hard to do right, without regard to the form of the technology. I hear constant nattering about how Web Services are "easier" and "better" than CORBA - but there's really only one difference: With CORBA, you had to go deal with the security/IT folks about opening a port in the firewall. With Web Services, port 80 is already open. That's it. And even that's getting hairier - there are XML routers out there that filter on specific schemas - yeah, that'll be optimal on the network. WSDL = IDL, and SOAP = IOP. It's all the same stuff. I cheerfully await the next great RPC mechanism that will be touted as easier than Web Services...