SOAP Library

[Mark Wieder]

Dave-

Saturday, October 6, 2007, 2:02:37 AM, you wrote:

> You might want to point out your revisions to RunRev. I think there
> is a case for consigning the "unsupported" stack to the bonfire. :-)

I'm not quite sure it's up to snuff the way it is. I wrote it by
modifying your original when it didn't work for me and I needed to
work with our existing web services. I wasn't at all sure it would
work over an https connection, but the authentication process went
smoothly.

> My inability to "get" SOAP, is that I still don't see how it offers
> great advantages over exchanging XML data with conventional http  
> POST. (But I know I'm guilty of not trying hard enough to understand.)

I think I agree with you there. SOAP, of course, allows you to provide
callable functions over a single port, with parameters passed as xml
data, but there are other ways of accomplishing the same goals without
having to go the SOAP route. In my case, as I said, I needed to work
with our existing web services, so a SOAP library fit the bill nicely.

My real problem with web services, though, is that they seem to
disappear after about six months or so. If you control both ends of
things (you're publishing the web services as well as consuming them)
then everything's ok. If you're relying on someone else's web services
then they might suddenly not be there some day.

It would appear that other folks try out web services and then either
can't figure them out or discover that it doesn't help them make money
and they go off and try something else.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net