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Asymmetrical Benefits. Glenn Fleishman--who created the book-finding site, isbn.nu -- writes that "Web services fed by companies that don't offer two-way contracts -- contracts that promise continuity, uptime, consistency, and persistence -- will make application developers nervous about relying on them."
This is a critical and non-obvious issue. First of all, sites like Glenn's, which depend on aggregating multiple web services, must be resilient. If the Amazon service doesn't respond, isbn.nu still shows data from the remaining booksellers. In this sense, isbn.nu is loosely coupled.
Amazon.com won't even notice is isb.nu goes off line, so there's a substantial asymmetry in their relationship. Glenn's point is that more business-critical applications, the less significant partner will hesitate to depend on such a relationship unless service-level commitments are offered. (Glenn was one of those people I wish I'd been able to spend more time with at the O'Reilly conference.) [Update: Comments by Jay Han]
Posted Sunday, April 27, 2003 12:29:42 PM 
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