Just to clear things up ;)
WDDX is NOT implemented in ColdFusion. ColdFusion contains functions to
SERIALIZE and DESERIALIZE a WDDX packet.
So what the hell does that mean?
Basically WDDX is an XML-based data exchange format created by Allaire (the
makers of ColdFusion) but released as an open standard, see
http://www.wddx.org). It allows for web applications (written in any
language or on any application platform) to exchange data.
Serialization is the process that converts a language native construct into
a WDDX constuct. (ie you can use the Java WDDX serialization class to
convert a JAVA array into a WDDX array, then send this WDDX packet over the
net to a CF app, which can deserialize the WDDX array into a COLDFUSION
array).
I believe there is pre-written code in ASP / VB / ColdFusion / Java /
JavaScript / Perl / COM to serialize and deserialize WDDX packets, but the
specs are open so you could write your own to contribute to these if you
wanted.
WDDX is extremely useful! Why? Here are some real world examples:
- Querying data from a remote datasource via HTTP. You could set up a back
end webpage that when accesses and given parameters, returns a WDDX
recordset, which you can then deserialise and use in your application.
- Offline data browsing. You could use Java to query a database, then create
a WDDX packet with the data returned and put it into a normal HTML page.
JavaScript (on the client side, but still embedded in the page) could
deserialize it and using DHTML you can create beautiful client side data
modification applications. When the records have all been updated,
JavaScript reserializes the packet and posts it back to the webserver, which
then deserializes into Java and writes back to the database. (This is
EXCEEDINGLY useful from personal experience)
- Using the COM object, you can exchange data between your online web
application and any offline application (eg Excel, Access, VB etc... imagine
producing a VB app that exchanges data with the web via HTTP?)
I hope this gives you some ideas & clears things up a bit, let me know if
you have any questions...
Cheers,
Mike
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-----Original Message-----
From: A mailing list for discussion about Sun Microsystem's Java Servlet
API Technology. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of anton
Sent: Thursday, 9 September 1999 1:11
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Server-Side Java & XML why?
btw, wddx is implemented in cold fusion
Spike Washburn wrote:
>
> The should have named XML for eXchangeable Markup Language. The use of
XML
> for exchanging the information stored on servers is definitely where
there's
> money to be made on the web. Forget that portal popularity contest junk.
> The longrunning popularity of a portal website is very unlikely, but the
> information on it could be forever valuable. If you have information on
> your website that is valuable, you can exchange it to the portals to
display
> on their own CPU time. If you're interested in an example of using XML
for
> cross language data exchange, check out http://www.wddx.org. WDDX
supports
> the easy exchange of data between JavaScript 1.x, ColdFusion 4.0, COM,
Perl
> and Java.
>
> -Spike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 10:01 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Server-Side Java & XML why?
>
> XML at the moment in our world has two major uses - the one that Mike
> outlines here and data exchange.
>
> Today the dominant application level network protocol is HTTP and more and
> more companies rely on this. At the same time HTTP has limitations - it's
> meant to transfer [hyper]text around (hence the 'H'). Many companies are
> also relying on the internet to do e-commerce, and, since HTTP combined
with
> HTML is limited in what data can be passed, have started to use other
> protocols. Unfortunately (in this case) network security people want to
open
> as few ports as possible (to the outside world) to limit possible security
> holes, so it becomes very difficult to do RPC type work on the internet.
One
> solution to this is to use HTTP tunneling (ala COM Internet Services in
NT4
> SP5 and NT5, also Java RMI), but now the problem is that you pass binary
> data in an unknown, or at least hard to parse format - again network
> security managers hate this!
>
> This is where XML enters the frame - it is hypertext (more so than HTML)
so
> HTTP can cope with it without any extensions - it's text, so no nasty
binary
> data getting through firewalls, it's easy to parse both by humans and
> computers, so allows filtering and logging code to be written easily. XML
is
> easily extended, easy to manipulate and (partly because of the hype) has a
> wealth of tools to manage the data.
>
> One other thing - Java doesn't lend itself easily to cross-language
> communication. OK we have CORBA and in the MS world COM but these tend to
be
> overkill in many scenarios. In this case think of XML as an object model,
> where the XML supplies the data and the recieving (or sending) application
> supplies the code. Now we have power - objects distributed not only within
a
> language but across languages, a truely language neutral RPC/Remote Object
> mechanism,
>
> Kevin
>
>
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