RE: RPG as a Web Service Consumer

"Don't do it" would be my simple answer for somebody that already has a
healthy Java background.  I have been working on RPG, XML, and web services
(minus WSDL) for about a year now and I spend more time building tools than
helping my company solve a business problem.  The only thing I didn't have
to write anything for was Scott Klements tool, that handled sending the HTTP
request quite nicely.

If you were strictly an RPG shop then I would say that RPG can definitely do
web services but throw a couple people at a project if you want it to get
done in a timely manner.  Reason being is that if you have some decent sized
XML docs that need parsing a serializing you have to do that all by hand.
Not to mention all of the utilities you have to build to document
transaction as they come and leave your iSeries.

Joe, I know you are a big proponent for using the right tool for the job,
and RPG isn't on the top of the list of right tools to do web services. Let
RPG do the business logic and leave it at that.  Move that Java line a
little more into the RPG camp and take over this functionality you are
proposing. 

These are purely my opinions, 

Aaron Bartell





-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 5:08 PM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RPG as a Web Service Consumer


I'm cross posting this in a few places, so if you see multiple copies of
this, please forgive me.  This is a rather unusual request in that in
researching the net (including archives, Google, mail scans, you name
it) I haven't found ANYTHING about the subject anywhere.  Since it
crosses several domains, I thought I'd give it a shot in multiple
places.

My question is this: has anybody tried calling a web service directly
from RPG?  I can't believe it's that difficult; it's simply a sockets
communication.  But I can find no examples anywhere.  I suppose I can
reverse engineer the Java client WDSC generated for me, but that seems
like overkill (especially after I looked at the code <shudder>).

It's not like it's crucial.  I can always call a Java program to do the
work.  But we all know the performance downsides of invoking Java from
RPG; it would be nice to be able to do it directly from RPG.

What do you all think?

Joe

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