Web services technology

gildir has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Web services became today's buzzword ...

And everybody is tlaking about web services now, as they talked about XML last year ... And the worst of this is that even I do like the concept of web services and I'm begining to expiriment with it little bit.

As a first step I want to implement bug submiting mini-application for our development team. We have task tracking system deployed as our internal application. We have also a web server on a demilitarized zone network.
Now I want to implement a simple web application on the external web server that will enable external users to log in, fill in bug report and submit it. I want this bug report to apear as a task in our internal task tracking system.

And now to the point. I want to implement web service on the internal task tracking system to receive reports from the external mini-application. SOAP came to my mind immediatly and I've looked at SOAP and SOAP::Lite modules. It looks very simple to use for standalone application, but it looks little bit complicated to integrate with existing (quite large) Apache/mod_perl application.

Are there any alternatives to SOAP for building web services in Perl? Does somebody have some experience using SOAP or any other mean of 'web-rpc' ? I will appreciate any help or sugestion.

Comment on Web services technology

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Web services technology by dug (Chaplain) on Dec 07, 2001 at 21:27 UTC
RPC::XML is a perl implementation of the RPC-XML protocol, which is similar to SOAP(XML based remote proceedure calls.) Both can be served up via different transport protocols (HTTP, SMTP FTP) and are fairly similar in nature. Something like the following: 1) User "A" submits a bug via the publicly acessible website. 2) Public website packages data into a SOAP call and calls SOAP server on bugtracking system in DMZ. 3) Soap server takes that object and interfaces with the bugtracking system's API to submit a new bug or trap an error. 4) If there is an error the SOAP server throws and exception which the client catches and displays something meaningfull to the user OR the bug is processed and some confirmation pages is displayed. Would be a fairly simple implementation (SOAP::Lite\|RPC::XML)	[reply]
Re: Web services technology by jaldhar (Vicar) on Dec 07, 2001 at 21:20 UTC
SOAP is based on the earlier (but still useful) XML-RPC protocol. the Frontier::RPC modules from CPAN implement it in perl. Frankly, I think most of this web services stuff is just hype. There seems to be very little you couldn't do with existing methods such as CGI. For an XML application server that integrates with Apache/modperl, I'm looking into AxKit but I don't know enough to really have an opinion on it yet.	[reply]
Re: Web services technology by Fletch (Bishop) on Dec 07, 2001 at 21:28 UTC
There's also RPC::XML for doing XML-RPC. Just keep in mind that SOAP and XML-RPC are more methods for doing remote operations (upon which you could build a `web service'). The former is object based, the later is more procedural (think XML-RPC : SOAP :: ONC RPC : CORBA). Also check out the ORA XML-RPC book.	[reply]
(crazyinsomniac) Re: Web services technology by crazyinsomniac (Prior) on Dec 08, 2001 at 05:57 UTC
Definition from http://searchmiddleware.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci750567,00.html says: Web services (sometimes called application services) are services (usually including some combination of programming and data, but possibly including human resources as well) that are made available from a business's Web server for Web users or other Web-connected programs. Providers of Web services are generally known as application service providers. Web services range from such major services as storage management and customer relationship management (CRM) down to much more limited services such as the furnishing of a stock quote and the checking of bids for an auction item. The accelerating creation and availability of these services is a major Web trend. Users can access some Web services through a peer-to-peer arrangement rather than by going to a central server. Some services can communicate with other services and this exchange of procedures and data is generally enabled by a class of software known as middleware. Services previously possible only with the older standardized service known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) increasingly are likely to become Web services. Besides the standardization and wide availability to users and businesses of the Internet itself, Web services are also increasingly enabled by the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a means of standardizing data formats and exchanging data. XML is the foundation for the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). As Web services proliferate, concerns include the overall demands on network bandwidth and, for any particular service, the effect on performance as demands for that service rise. A number of new products have emerged that enable software developers to create or modify existing applications that can be "published" (made known and potentially accessible) as Web services. This definition undoubtedly tells you its just more marketing hooey. There is no web services "technology". ___crazyinsomniac_______________________________________ `Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void` `perl -e "$q=$_;map({chr unpack qq;H;,$_}split(q;;,qH*));print;$q/$q;"`	[reply]
(jeffa) Re: Web services technology by jeffa (Bishop) on Dec 08, 2001 at 04:31 UTC
maverick and myself worked on a AAA system using mod_soap. We didn't have time to get into 'Web Services' per say, but the finished product worked beautifully. I highly recommend you give mod_soap a chance, it was a bit of a pain to set up at first. You can read about those pains at troubles writing mod_soap clients. If you have other problems, just ask here or /msg me. jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F-- (the triplet paradiddle)	[reply]