Oh, it wasn't my intention to propose a re-implementation of the whole BioMart. From a user's perspective it doesn't matter so much, that is true. I believe too that asking for a re-implementation of an existing software "just because" would not be such a good argument. There are some arguments for both languages, and I think the actual BioMart is doing fine in Perl, except the soap portion. This might be because the SOAP::Lite module as fine as it was at its time, is quite dated and there are some interoperability issues. It is possible however to generate compatible messages with it but it takes some expertise.
The core advantage of Java over perl is for our use-case the availability of several more developed SOAP implementations like Axis2 or javaWS that allow for WS-I compliance and code generation. Maybe it is possible to replace only portions of the system? This depends on how much work has already been done on the Java code. Also I noticed that this is an open-source project and that it could draw from many resources for the services implementation. But I do not really know how community contributions are handled within this project. So would it be possible to get access to the sources, and provide patches if necessary? Best Am Mar 23, 2010 um 2:30 PM schrieb Joachim Baran: > On 23 March 2010 12:42, Leandro Hermida <[email protected]> wrote: >> [..] In my opinion the is no reason to change to Java other than >> just because and this would be a shame. > Perhaps Java is more suitable for larger projects from a software > engineering point-of-view. There has been quite a lot of work being > done on design patterns in Java -- as opposed to Perl's TIMTOWTDI. > > BW, > Joachim > > -- > B.1079 Michael Smith Building > Faculty of Life Sciences > The University of Manchester > Oxford Road > Manchester > M13 9PT > United Kingdom
