Hi there,
I'm the author of the Helma XML-RPC library, and I'd like to deliver some
background information as well as my personal view regarding the jakarta/xml
dispute.
To put it right upfront, I don't think XML-RPC is a natural fit for
xml.apache.org, and I'd prefer to see it at Jakarta. Let me explain.
XML-RPC is a protocol that has been explicitly frozen since 1998 or so, and
even at that time it only used a small subset of XML. Sure, it has the XML
in its name, but all it does is define a handful of elements to wrap some
common data types - strings, numbers, date objects, structs and so on. No
other elements may ever occur in XML-RPC, let alone any of the additional
XML add-ons that have been spec'ed out since 1998. To see what I'm talking
about have a look at the XML-RPC spec at http://www.xmlrpc.com/spec (if you
like compare it to the SOAP spec for contrast). XML-RPC is not about XML, it
just uses the minimum XML necessary to pass method calls and data between
clients/servers.
This means that coupling XML-RPC with a full featured XML environment may
not have a lot of benefits - in fact, in my experience all it does is
increase memory footprint and download size and decrease performance, simply
because XML-RPC doesn't use any but the most primitive parsing facilities.
So why Jakarta? One area is HTTP support - XML-RPC works over HTTP, and the
code contains both an embedded HTTP server as well as a client and a servlet
interface. I'd say most of the feature requests or questions I get revolve
around HTTP or Servlet issues, and I definitely think that Jakarta is the
ideal environment for this. Another hot development area may be to improve
mapping between XML-RPC data types and Java objects. Since XML-RPC data
types are carved in stone, there's practically no XML work going on here,
but it will be very Java-specific.
Of course, development can take place anywhere. I just don't see how XML-RPC
would fit into the Apache XML project. If anybody actually does have a
proposal please let me know.
cheers,
Hannes
> Von: robert burrell donkin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Antworten an: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Datum: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 20:13:07 +0100
> An: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Betreff: Re: Helma XML-RPC @ Jakarta
>
> On Wednesday, July 4, 2001, at 05:19 AM, Ian Kallen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>> My unsolicited opinion: projects focused on the manipulation and
>> purveyance of
>> data as XML could/should belong in the xml.apache.org project while
>> implementations of Java technologies associate with Jakarta.
>
> (BTW this is a general response rather than an opinion about Helma XML-RPC)
> i believe that xml.apache.org has a strong emphasis on standards. that
> means that "projects focused on the manipulation and purveyance of data as
> XML" which are not standards-based will not necessarily find a home there.
> excluding projects from jakarta simply because they are xml-related would
> therefore seem to allow otherwise appropriate projects to 'fall through
> the cracks' between xml.apache.org and jakarta.apache.org.
>
> for what it's worth...
> what ever happened to the idea that was being floated about
> jakarta-xml common projects (or was it 'xml-jakarta-commons')?
>
> - robert
>
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