Re: SOAP, WSDL

[Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>]

Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net> writes:

> 	… Which brings this long unasked question of mine: why can’t we
> 	just have soap-lite.el, too?  And thus cease to bother about
> 	either Debbugs.wsdl, /or/ WSDL support in soap-client.el in
> 	general – in the cases the service at hand doesn’t happen to
> 	provide a ready to use WSDL file.

Most of the SOAP services I know offer an WSDL file. soap-client.el
gives you full support for that.

For debbugs a soap-lite.el package would have helped me three years ago,
but this is old history.

> 	(I’m not a SOAP expert, but I’ve got an impression that WSDL is
> 	an entirely separate layer used over “plain” SOAP.)

Well, looking at very complex WSDL files I believe it helps to
understand and implement the API details. With the experience of
debbugs, I believe it would have been more simple to implement it with
an existing WSDL file. Debugging Debbugs::SOAP (the Perl module from the
BTS team) was not simple as I hoped.

Something like soap-lite (be it Perl or Lisp) is easy to use for the
guys offering a service, as it has been for the BTS team. They know what
is behind. If you are just a "consumer" of an API, WSDL is more useful
for understanding.

Best regards, Michael.