Dave Winer: SOAP

Industry Standard: The 'X' in What's Next. With great fanfare, Forrester Research announced last week that the Web is dead. With so many failing dot-coms, that news wouldn't be so hard to believe - if it weren't that Forrester has spent the past few years touting it as an engine of unrelenting hypergrowth. [Tomalak's Realm]

The Code Project: SOAPing without a Web Server.

Paul Kulchenko: SOAP Cookbook.

On the Apache soap-dev mail list they're talking about doing a new build. So it appears to be lockdown time in SOAP 1.1 interop. With Microsoft and Apache deploying the results of the interop work, it's time for UserLand to do the same and ask developers to start building apps. [Scripting News]

Brent McLaughlin: A closer look at SOAP.

Jon Udell: "Most of us, I guess, don't try to eat the whole XML layer cake, and would get sick if we tried."

Rhett Guthrie: "I am designing a SOAP service for a client. Very exciting work. I have a question about how to best structure the service." [Scripting News]

I've been thinking about next steps in SOAP 1.1 interop. We seem to be getting through the wire level, so the next thing is to have a set of criteria for application-level interop. I understand that there are lots of potential uses for SOAP, but our interest is clearly in the Web as a writing environment. I also understand that the world revolves around Microsoft until we prove otherwise. So here's the benchmark I propose. First, deliver a multi-vendor SOAP-based writing-publishing system that uses no Microsoft software. Then switch out the non-Microsoft components with Microsoft pieces, one at a time, and have it still work. [Scripting News]

Paolo Marcucci has a Visual Basic script that converts a Word document to OPML. He says "Next step is importing a OPML file in Word, rebuilding the document format, and using Simon's function to pack it into a SOAP message." [Scripting News]

Wire dumps: "This table shows an example request and response for each of the xmlStorageSystem calls, in both XML-RPC and SOAP 1.1."

Pat Thoyts: SOAP for Tcl. [Scripting News]

In an interview today I compared SOAP to the NYC subway system, specifically Queens Borough Plaza. The cool thing about QBP is that you can switch from the IRT to the BMT there, cutting a corner off a trip to the Bronx from Flushing. Originally there were three subway systems in NY, but sometime before I came online (ie before I was born) they got their interop act together so you could freely switch from one line to the other, combining features of two or three lines to create your own customized trip. I imagine that they had a mail list for their interop work, like the soapbuilders list, where the BMT guys thought the IRT guys were a bunch of bozos, but they had to work with them anyway; and the IND guys were worried about getting stuffed into the trunk. [Scripting News]

A new entry-point for xmlStorageSystem. [Scripting News]

Heads up: A key difference between SOAP and XML-RPC.

Dave and Jake: A Busy Developer's Guide to SOAP 1.1. Draft. [Scripting News]

There are now 41 SOAP 1.1 implementations. [Scripting News]

Tony Hong has a list of SOAP 1.1 interop issues.

I posted a plan for the Interopathon process today on the SoapWare site. If you know a SOAP 1.1 implementor please make sure he or she sees this page. It's very important that this process be inclusive, if it's to make a difference. [Scripting News]

Jabber.Org: Integration of full support for XML-RPC and SOAP. [Scripting News]

Simon Fell started a WSDL issues site.

Interview: Dave Winer on Radio Userland. We interview Dave Winer, founder of UserLand Software, about his newest creation, Radio Userland. Thirteen years in the making, Radio Userland puts an industrial strength Web server on your desktop. Designed to be extended by developers, Radio will also appeal to the masses with its news aggregator and weblog features. By Andy King. 0312

Mark Watson: "I may be too optimistic, but I do believe that the SOAP platform will transcend the Microsoft-only world of Windows and will provide a universal platform for building web based applications and platform independent clients."

DizzyD talks about Jabber as middleware. As I understand it, we could use Jabber to transport XML-RPC and SOAP messages. Instead of sending a procedure call to an IP address, or domain name, you'd send it to a Jabber user. This would allow us to design groupware applications that reach any desktop Jabber can get to, and it would allow you to move around. (You'd have to have the groupware software on every machine, though.)

Simon Fell: "So, following all the fuss on the SOAP list over WSDL, I thought I'd have another look at the current WSDL tools, to see if they've improved at all since last time I looked, here's a brief summary of what I found."

Important but small changes in the ManilaRPC interface, remove the requirement for base64 encoding and decoding in client apps.

Microsoft: SOAP Toolkit Beta 2.0.

Intuit is operating an XML-over-HTTP programmable database called QuickBase. It's free. Interesting.

A frequently asked question. What's the connection between SOAP and Jabber? It would be great to get a comparative review of these technologies by someone who's knows XML. Could Jabber have a SOAP or XML-RPC interface? If so, what would it look like? Does it make sense from the Jabber developer point of view? What would be the win? I don't have time to dig into this myself at this time but am interested in reading a comparison of the technologies.

The world's best-kept secret. There's SOAP 1.1 support for Mozilla. Update. We now have 37 SOAP 1.1 implementations in the SoapWare directory, maintained by Paul Kulchenko. And now I don't have to count them by hand, each page on the directory says how many items it contains. A small convenience. Also each page links to its OPML source through the white-on-orange XML icon.

RFC: A Little IDL. "I decided to define a simple interface definition language in XML that's suitable for scripting environments, and see if people find holes in its functionality, or if it's useful, or something we want to do. It's little and human-readable. The goal is to have it work with scripting systems that are wired up to XML-RPC or SOAP 1.1."

ActiveState: PerlEx 2.0. "Easily build and deploy Web Services that utilize SOAP."

PythonWare's SOAP validates.

It's time that SOAP had a directory.

Builder.Com: An Introduction to SOAP. Nice!

Radio: SOAP-in-Radio Checklist.

Miguel de Icaza is working on SOAP-for-Gnome. Bravo! Scroll to the end of this News.Com article for clues. Also gotta include a plug for KDE, which is a longtime supporter of XML-RPC.

Gigaideas: SOAP Client for PHP.

White Mesa: SOAP for RPC NT Service.

Simon Fell started a SOAP Manila site, and is documenting stuff there. And he's getting his SOAP implementation to work with Manila's SOAP interface. I am breathing a sigh of relief. It's starting to really work!

UserLand's SOAP 1.1 Validator. This approach worked really well for finding the incompatibilities between XML-RPC implementations. Let's find out if we work together!

Perl.Com: Quick Start with SOAP.

4S4C SOAP services for COM updated. Simon Fell has released version 1.3 of 4S4C, his SOAP library for COM integration, now including a WSDL generator.

Paul Kulchenko: SOAP::Lite 0.45.

Bug fixes for MS SOAP Toolkit 2.0 Beta 1. Roger Wolter from Microsoft announced a refresh of Microsoft's SOAP Toolkit 2.0 beta 1, with fixes to "few of the more vexing bugs that have been reported thus far."

Eric Kidd released XML-RPC for C/C++.

Two-Way-Web: SOAP meets RSS.

What is Brazil?

DaveNet: Desktop Websites.

Thte SOAP weblog gets XMLized.

Internet News: Microsoft Updates Web Services Tools. The software powerhouse improves two tools for Web developers.

Syd Egan: SOAP for Visual Basic.

Mary Jo Foley: Web services, few actually deliver. "Are the industry leaders onto a hot trend? Or are the emperors parading around without clothes?"

C/C++ User's Journal on SOAP.

PocketSOAP is a "SOAP client COM component for the Windows family, originally targeted at PocketPC (hence the name)."

ZDNN: Netdocs: Microsoft's .Net poster child? According to sources, Netdocs is a single, integrated application that will include a full suite of functions, including e-mail, personal information management, document-authoring tools, digital-media management, and instant messaging.

Microsoft throws more muscle into SOAP. Microsoft have released SOAP Toolkit 2.0 Beta 1, which integreates WSDL more thoroughly, and is also billed as a "fully Microsoft supported product."