RE: "Uh, what do I need this for" (was RE: XML.COM: How I Learne d to Love daBomb)

[Al Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Michael Brennan wrote:

> Developers still need to write business logic, and they need to get the
> information from the XML document into data structures better suited to
> supporting that business logic. All of the APIs in the XML world are
> unsuited for this. They force the developer to mold their logic to fit an
> API that is only suited for modeling a document structure, rather than
> letting the developer mold their data structures and APIs to align with
> business concepts and processes.

Of course, any RPC system will provide this already :-)

See http://uk.php.net/manual/en/ref.satellite.php

That's the API for a PHP CORBA interface. This is how complex CORBA is to
use...

Assuming we have an IDL interface file reading:

                        interface MyInterface {
                            void SetInfo (string info);
                            string GetInfo();

                            attribute int value;
                        }

When we've installed the Satellite CORBA client library, we can write PHP
to access something with that interface like this:

			<?php
                        $obj = new OrbitObject ($ior);

                        $obj->SetInfo ("A 2GooD object");

                        echo $obj->GetInfo();

                        $obj->value = 42;

                        echo $obj->value;
                        ?>

$ior is the object reference - think URL.

That will handle exceptions, too. SOAP is not unique in being able to
differentiate exceptions from valid method returns!

You need a *lot* of libraries to get to that level in XML, much more
complex code than an IIOP client stub (which this is). Sure you can
hand-code a particular interface direct at the DOM level or by outputting
prewritten XML markup with the data inserted at the relevant points, but
why bother when you can install a library and have it done for you? You'll
need a lot of library code to parse the reply to your SOAP call anyway :-)

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software