RE: RPG as a Web Service Consumer -- RPG400-L

>You're too young to remember much about EDI, but EDI was once touted as the
great inter-machine communication method.

Actually, I have a chunk of EDI x.12 experience.  I played a major role in
implementing our first go at Harbinger (now Inovus).  Now that you know
that, does that change your opinion about me?   I didn't think so. . . ;-)

The problems you stated aren't with XML it is with the organizations that
use them.  I think we are on the verge of getting some nice tools to process
XML so we don't even necessarily know that XML is involved.  Sadly RPG will
never see these tools implemented well into the language.  

>350 characters of overhead for a simple SOAP message?
I think you miss the point of XML.  You aren't just trading up 50 characters
for 350 characters without any benefit, you are getting much more
functionality and flexibility with many more technologies built on an around
it.  Are some of technologies difficult to use? Most definitely, but it is
the start of a new way to communicate (and yes I know that the XML concept
isn't new, I have researched since the last time we had this discussion :-).

>XML and particularly SOAP are not the universal panacea.
I agree.  But where used correctly, XML can be much more appealing solution
than others that claim to work just as well.  We had the discussion of
sending an entire PO to a CGI RPG program in Form variables in the WEB400
forum last year sometime.  Can that be done? Yes.  Is it more messy than
XML? Definitely.  Will it scale in the future? Not very well.  XML is not
the end all, but it definitely can play a role in most peoples
organizations.

I don't care to move this over to WEB400 if you are just going to argue
about 350 bytes going over a communication line.  If that is what we are
going to talk about I am fine with not talking, because I have beat that
horse before :-)

Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 5:08 PM
To: 'RPG programming on the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: RPG as a Web Service Consumer


> From: Bartell, Aaron L. (TC)
> 
> I think you are unfairly calling XML "clumsy" when in all actuality it
is
> so powerful that it can adhere to almost any situation as far as data
> transport and config files go.

Folks, you might want to move this philosophical discussion to another
place.  I vote for WEB400-L myself.  But in the meantime, Aaron, one
little remark: XML is simply an encoding method, inherently no better or
worse than any other.  You're too young to remember much about EDI, but
EDI was once touted as the great inter-machine communication method.
The problem with any such standard is that it quickly gets bloated with
lots of garbage.  At least EDI has a standards body; the XML community
is far less organized than that and it shows in the XML conventions.

350 characters of overhead for a simple SOAP message?  Most of which is
essentially the same for every message?  That's downright silly.  XML
and particularly SOAP are not the universal panacea.

Joe

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