----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Heath" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 8:30 PM Subject: Re: xml-rpc webservices?
> I am talking about conforming to the wsdl, soap, xml, uddi > specifications that .net, velocigen, glue, etc... are using. You can > find more about this at www.xmethods.net. What confuses me is the > difference between xml-rpc and apache soap. If you can elaborate on > this I would really appreciate it. The other thing which I wanted to > know is if there is some kind of middle tier or library for converting > such attempts at implementing webservices specifications from one to the > other for interoperability. Well, XML-RPC uses XML (obviously!). However it's not SOAP. The XML-RPC community seems to potter along without the need for global multi level directory services. The stuff mostly works and interoperates (between a very large number of implementations in a very large number of languages). XML-RPC is a simple RPC mechanism which just aims to support remote procedure calls over HTTP with relatively simple data. SOAP is a far more complex (and rich) mechanism which supports both RPC and message passing models over arbitrary transport mechanisms with and open ended data model. XML-RPC is probably sufficient for 90% of the real world cases, SOAP is probably sufficient for 95%. SOAP is one or two orders of magnitude more complex. Both allow the implementation of Web Services. I don't know of any interoperability layer. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile building one. Does this help? John Wilson The Wilson Partnership http://www.wilson.co.uk
