Re: Web service question... -- RPG400-L

Hi Larry, actually you may have helped clear up some understanding on my
part.
It was a bit of a rhetorical question. I was required to test the RPGLE
program which was called by the CL program in the link due to a file
change.
I was given the link and told that it would be called repeatedly for a
document number (sorry but not a document as I originally posted). I called
it through the browser and the RPGLE program on the back end used CGIDEV2 to
process the request.

But if I understand you correctly this is already a web service using REST
through the browser.

Thanks,

Robert Rogerson

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 7:12 AM, Larry Ducie <larry_ducie@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Hi Robert,

I must confess to being ignorant of your needs here: You state "This link
is called repeatedly for all the items on a document." and I don't know what
you mean. I have lots of questions:

What is the document?
Where is the document?
How is the link called repeatedly?
What is making these repeated calls?
Why do you think a RPG program using HTTPAPI would be better than the
current implementation?
Is the document currently processed within a RPG program?

If the links are called through a browser via anchor tags or AJAX calls and
you are talking about moving those calls to the server - think carefully
before blocking the service in such a way.

(I'm here guessing because I don't know what you are doing, or what you
want to do)

But while I'm here... there seems to be some general confusion about web
services, which is not usually helped when such things as SOAP and REST are
bandied about. :-)

Lets make it clear:

1. A web service is a service provided by one machine that can be accessed
by another machine over a network
2. SOAP is a protocol, not a service
3. REST is an architecture, not a protocol, nor a service

REST is an architecture that allows the client to be "at rest" and only
access services when required. When changes occur that need to be propagated
to a remote service the client is in a brief state of flux and then goes
back to being "at rest". The use of the HTTP 1.1 protocol is a classic
implementation of a RESTful architecture - your browser is "at rest" until
you click something, or a time-based function fires up. It then performs a
required task (retrieve a resource, or post some information) and then goes
back to being "at rest".

I've probably not helped much, but I think I'd need more info to be really
useful. Unless your post was rhetorical.

Cheers

Larry Ducie
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