Re: Feedback on Web Services (RE: Web Services stuff - fyi)

[Jeff Crilly <jlc-xalan@myrealbox.com>]

>From: Amit Bhatiani <amit@invertica.com>
>
> Could not agree more on the general hype surrounding web services. Here are
> more specific questions to Michael, Edd and the group in general that might
> elicit more specific answers.
> 
> 
> 1. Has anyone implemented a SOAP based RPC or otherwise synchronous callable
> style interface in production?

We recently utilized SOAP to integrate two app servers together --
essentially one is servicing traditional client requests with a
J2EE+DB application.  A small part, but extremely essential, utilizes
a second app server hosted by a partner company.  The interaction
between the two app servers is SOAP (over http).  RMI wouldnt
hack it (well) for this app... the app servers are behind
http web servers; the web servers are exposed to the internet
and implement SSL authentication (https) for all connections. 
(Yes, I suppose we could have done RMI over HTTP, but that never
seemed to work well for me, even in theory.)

(As for the other items, eg UDDI, no not yet.)

This isnt web services per-se, in the notion sun has been
pushing with smarter clients (eg java apps in the web start
container) using SOAP from the client tier.

jeff