Web Services and .NET

Research before Development

This page contains follow-ups to the article : Web Services and .NET (Part 2)
If you have questions about this article, please e-mail .

Follow-up to: "…take a look at XML-RPC. The definition* is tiny…"
See http://xml-rpc.org/ where you''ll find a link to the spec and other valuable info.

Follow-up to: …Other* protocols…

Follow-up to: "…IBM*"

Follow-up to: "…digitally signing…"

Follow-up to: "…a Web Service that identifies current suppliers for some product.*"
I just made that one up on the fly. I kinda like it. If someone wants to fund or implement this project, just let me know!

Follow-up to: "…other discovery protocols and resources…"

Follow-up to: "…a client interface to a server.*"

Follow-up to: "Microsoft SOAP Toolkit*"

Follow-up to: "…Tools* for auto-generating WSDL…"

Follow-up to: "… SOAP::Lite*"

Follow-up to: "… Apache Software Foundation*, Sun Microsystems, and IBM."

Follow-up to: "…wrapper components…"

Follow-up to: "…the Mono* project…"

Follow-up to: ".NET and Apache SOAP also expect all parameters in a call to be named and typed*"

Follow-up to: "…Web Service Architecture*…"

Miscellaneous Web Service Information

Other Protocols

Jabber:
http://www.jabber.org

BEEP:
http://www.beepcore.org/beepcore/home.jsp

HTTPr:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-phtt/

SMTP:

Apache SOAP SMTP Bridge:
http://ws.apache.org/soap/faq/faq_chawke_smtp.html

Example with Python:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-pyth12.html

PocketSoap (Also see the homepage for PocketXML-RPC):
http://www.pocketsoap.com/specs/smtpbinding/

Web Services using SMTP and WebSphere Studio:
http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/library/techarticles/0212_hygh/hygh.html

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IBM

IBM has been working closely with Microsoft to develop common standards, and provides a wealth of tools for WS development. If you have a larger shop, you prefer supported brand name software to open source "roll your own", or you simply have more money than time to invest in development, I recommend taking a look at IBM's impressive offerings. No, you don't need U2 or AIX to use IBM software. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/ If you're in the commercial market, other companies provide more complete "solutions" as well. Once you have a handle on the requirements for Web Services, go ahead and look into these package offerings. Sun, for example has the free Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP), but they also have their Sun ONE products. http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/webservices/index.html

High end solutions

BEA Systems:
http://www.bea.com/

webMethods
http://www.webmethods.com/integrate_your_enterprise/1,2565,WebServices,00.html

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Digital Signing

IBM Digital Signature for SOAP:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-soapsec/

Microsoft WS-Security Specs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/wssecurspecindex.asp

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Discovery Protocols

WS-Inspection:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/wsinspecspecindex.asp

ebXML Registry:
http://www.ebxml.org/

JXTA:
http://jxta.org
(Project JXTA includes much more than just UDDI-like services, it includes an alternative to SOAP and a host of other protocols and paradigms for creating Web Services)

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Client/Server Interface

One of these days I hope to see a tool in our market where someone can execute a program on their MV server, and a WSDL document will be generated for a selected list of callable Pick BASIC subroutines. With the right "plumbing", this would allow Pick developers to provide specialized Web Services with no special coding effort. Of course this is subject to standards issues mentioned in the rest of the article. The answers to these issues lie in that plumbing.

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Microsoft SOAP Toolkit

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/downloads/list/websrv.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/ and other sub-sites

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WSDL

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/02/12/XMLFiles/default.aspx
Many utilities that generate SOAP-compliant interfaces also generate their own WSDL as an option, sometimes badly. If you have a need for a certain type of WSDL generation tool, perhaps one that generates WSDL for your own MV applications which you expose as Web Services, please let us know.

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SOAP::Lite

http://www.soaplite.com/
Just take a look at the amazing Features section.

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Apache, Sun, IBM

http://ws.apache.org/
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/
http://java.sun.com/webservices/

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Wrapper Components

Nebula R&D can develop wrappers which allow your business application to utilize any of the underlying technologies discussed in these articles directly from your BASIC code.

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MONO

http://www.go-mono.com/

The Mono project has a lot of development that needs to be completed before "real world" applications can rely on it, but I'm going to keep an eye on this. For a book on the topic, here are Google references for the new book Mono Kick Start from SAMs Publishing.

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.NET and Apache SOAP Parameters

I didn't check to see if Apache SOAP requires properly named parameters but they certainly must be typed. There are a number of places in the article where I group technologies together when they aren't a perfect fit, but the constraints for space didn't permit perfect declaration of all exceptions. If you can recognize where I've done this then I'm just happy to know there's another Pickie in the world who's on top of the technologies.

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Web Service Architecture

http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-ws-arch-20030808/