An interesting analysis of Eric van der Vlist on XML Hack about webservices, their definition and their use.
I basically agree with him saying SOAP is a terrible hack to use a hammer to pin a screw. Something like REST is far more lighter, well suited to the hyperlinked web, and Cocoon is the perfect tool for this.
When it tackles traditional computing (such as client-server applications), the W3C produces nothing really good : XMLSchema and SOAP are both huge and hard to master when more simple specifications (e.g. Relax NG) can perfectly do the job.
Interesting to read also are other comments on this article, written by Microsoft bigots which consider that something is good because large companies say it is good. And I don't consider myself to be a long-bearded REST fanatic...