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In service discovery is just convenient. With SOAP libraries, using a web service is as easy as 2-3 lines of code. The library handles loading the wsdl file, generating functions with appropriate parameters, sending requests and parsing response and exception handling. Without this ability, it's a lot more code.

It's not necessarily harder, but it's more code nevertheless.

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The problem with SOAP + WDSL was just that it was overly complex and, in my experience, never worked cross-platform & cross-language. And since it was so complex it was "¤%& impossible to debug at lower levels. Argh! I hate soap with such a vengeance it's actually embarrassing.

Agreed. These problems (complex tooling, poor interop, non-human readable WSDL) were my motivation for writing Barrister RPC (a JSON-RPC implementation with a human readable IDL).

For those who find value in separating interface from implementation, you might take a gander.

http://barrister.bitmechanic.com/

True. Once you have the right libraries in place working with SOAP can be surprisingly easy. I always find defining and passing data types/structures the most frustrating exercise with SOAP though, especially collections. REST makes that stuff so much easier.

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