RE: RPG as a Web Service Consumer

<Joe>
But that sort of ignores a larger point: if I just want to send a simple
text message to a service and get a message in response, and web
services are so complicated that I can't do that easily in RPG, then web
services are too complicated.  There needs to be a simpler interface for
people who don't need all the bells and whistles of SOAP.
</Joe>

I haven't really used SOAP that much (mostly just read about it and designed
some documents to use it).  I think you can do web services just fine
outside of SOAP if you are doing simple messaging.  And if it is really that
simple then RPG wouldn't be a bad choice.  I just didn't like to have my
feet in both camps of deciding when it was small enough to let RPG handle it
and when it was large enough to pick Java instead.  I would rather just have
one language and point of entry doing my XML communication.

That's one thing that you have to decide for yourself as far as which
technologies to include in your XML messaging.  If it is purely for intranet
stuff, then I wouldn't even think about doing SOAP unless it was tied right
into the language (like it is with .NET and kinda with Java).  But if you
are talking to external entities you usually end up doing whatever they
request assuming they already have a messaging protocol they want you to
follow, and if they don't have something, then giving them something as
complicated as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, XSD's, etc. . . will only confuse matters.

I have included a simple header that the corp I work for is using as we move
forward with XML messaging and business transactions.  This might spark some
idea's for you. . . we based most of it off of the cXML.org standard.

Aaron Bartell

<CSO>
        <Header>
                <MsgDelivery>
                        <To>
                                <Credential domain="DUNS">
                                        <Identity>1231112322</Identity>
                                        <SharedSecret>hui</SharedSecret>
                                </Credential>
                        </To>
                        <From>
                                <Credential domain="DUNS">
                                        <Identity>12129812</Identity>
        
<SharedSecret>greeneggs</SharedSecret>
                                </Credential>
                        </From>
                        <Sender>
                                <Credential domain="mycompany.com">
                                        <Identity>Biztalk01</Identity>
                                        <SharedSecret>hithere</SharedSecret>
                                </Credential>
                                <UserAgent>String</UserAgent>
                        </Sender>
                </MsgDelivery>
                <MsgHeader>
                        <MessageId>1212-1212-2323-4433</MessageId>
                        <Timestamp>String</Timestamp>
                        <ResponseTo>3432-5647-4432-2234</ResponseTo>
                        <DocumentId>PurchaseOrder</DocumentId>
                </MsgHeader>
        </Header>
        <Request>
                . . . this is where your payload goes . . .
        </Request>
</CSO>