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.
