Web service standards question

[Hans-Martin Adorf]

Wil,

your comments are appreciated. If, for the moment, I follow your 
suggestion, how do I then specify that the result of calling a SOAP 
service is a VOTable? Am I supposed to specify that the result will be a 
String, and it will be up to the receiver to use the latest VOTable 
parser in order to decode the VOTable?

OK, and then if SOAP by itself does not provide a table model, but we in 
the VO community have one (implicitely through VOTable) or more 
(excplicitly inside of Toptable, SAVOT or the GAVO table system), why 
don't we go ahead and augment the SOAP standard? Id' really like to 
download a WSDL and submit it to myWSDL2Java compiler, and start using 
the client.

Hans-Martin

Wil O'Mullane wrote:

>>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
>
>
>  
>

-- 
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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