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Hi Alasdair,<br>
<br>
as the name indicates, the SOAP protocol allows the transfer of
objects. This has nothing to do with Java. The SOAP protocol is
programming language neutral, and I can transmit an object from C# to
Java, or from Java to Perl. (We have done the latter.) So I believe
your comment that transmitting an object would "be highly language
specific" misses the point.<br>
<br>
Why would you prefer an XML string representation that you have to
parse in order to construct an object which you could get immediately?
And why would you want to use SOAP at all, if you don't want objects?
Where is the benefit compared to a much simpler REST service?<br>
<br>
What is a "liternal service", please?<br>
<br>
Regards<br>
Hans-Martin<br>
<br>
Alasdair Allan wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="midPine.LNX.4.44.0405261342500.32284-100000@dastardly.astro.ex.ac.uk">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">VOTable is an XML format, and thus very appropriate for REST services,
where the query is submitted via a simple HTTP GET or POST, and the
result is commonly returned in XML. However, these days people, when
talking about Web services, usually mean SOAP-based Web services, which
I believe is what you are talking about, too. (Please correct me, if I'm
wrong.) As the name states, SOAP is a protocol allowing the transfer of
objects. I believe, we should not encode tabular data in a VOTable XML
format, which is in some sense a serialization of some internal data
object, and then let the server-side SOAP mechanism wrap it once more
with XML. Not only is this totally inefficient (factors of 10 or more
can easily be encountered), but we also do not take advantage of the
abilities of the SOAP mechanism.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Erm, no. It depends very critically whether you're talking about SOAP RPC
services, or wrapped, or document liternal services. XML documents are
perfectly appropriate things to return from a SOAP service.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">What I would like to see is an internal tabular data object that is
populated on the server side, then transparently serialized and
transmitted via SOAP, and finally reconstructed on the client side.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
That would be highly language specific, document literal, or wrapped
document where a language neutral XML document is transmitted is a much
better idea IMHO. Not everybody is using Java...
Al.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<title>Dr. Hans-Martin Adorf</title>
<font color="#999999" face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small> Dr.
Hans-Martin Adorf • Max-Planck-Institut f. extraterrestrische Physik </small></font><font
color="#999999" face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small> • </small></font><font
color="#999999" face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small>Giessenbachstr.
1 • D-85741 Garching b. München
• Germany <br>
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<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:adorf@mpe.mpg.de">adorf@mpe.mpg.de</a></small></font><font color="#999999"
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small> • WWW: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.g-vo.org">http://www.g-vo.org</a></small></font>
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