Web service standards question

[Hans-Martin Adorf]

Hi Alasdair,

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.

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?

What is a "liternal service", please?

Regards
Hans-Martin

Alasdair Allan wrote:

>>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.
>>    
>>
>
>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.
>
>  
>
>>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. 
>>    
>>
>
>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.
>  
>

-- 
Dr. Hans-Martin Adorf . Max-Planck-Institut f. extraterrestrische Physik 
. Giessenbachstr. 1 . D-85741 Garching b. München . Germany
Phone: +49-89-30000-3352 . Fax: +49-89-30000-3404 . E-Mail: 
adorf at mpe.mpg.de . WWW: http://www.g-vo.org
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