What do you mean with that? Do you mean the GML hell? Or just the way to access the WFS service. If so, I’m afraid that the same could be applied to WMS services, don’t you think?

Lack of URIs means no linking or discovery by Google Search
It doesn’t leverage web infrastructure for caching or load balancing.
It has a proprietary interface that requires clients that are coupled to servers

I could go on, but generally I don’t like its architecture. I suppose it is better than some solutions, but honestly WFS is still routed in an older way of thinking that to me isn’t “web compatible”.

I wanted to follow up on your comment that WFS has failed in the marketplace. How is WFS ill-conceived? I’m asking because I was considering trying a WFS-T service with ArcGIS Server on an upcoming project…

Thanks!

But, no I’m not assuming that tiles are hosted in “the cloud”. I’m saying that it shouldn’t matter at all how they are hosted, and that no particular storage or platform should be excluded. Any URI should be as good as another.

But, Sean’s request is based on the assumption; data is hosted in a cloud where the number of files/resources in a directory does not affect performance.

Providing a format string, rather than a strict URL scheme is one solution, but the that places an increased responsibility on developers.