Web service standards question

[Wil O'Mullane]

> as the name indicates, the SOAP protocol allows the transfer of objects. 
No longer true - SOAP is now SOAP it no longer means
"Simple Object Access Protocol"
and has much more to do with messaging .

> 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.
I think the point is that I can certainly send a Dataset from C# to Java
via a WebService but what you get in Java is a complex DOM document which
is practically useless - you do not get the Same DataSet I have in Java.
The DataTable in java is similar. These objects cheat in their own language
by having a special sterilizer/sterilizer which make them very useful in
a given language but not actually portable.

Unfortunately SOAP has not provided a common 'Table' data model which
works in all languages in the same manner. A pity indeed.

VOTable is not perfect but it does work .

There are many other objects (and more to come from data models group) which will work very well with SOAP. But for tabular data for now we need to use VOTABLE..


wil