James, you are thinking like a programmer and not like a
scientist/engineer/<all other non-computer professionals> !!!
RPC is legitimate and can be very useful but it's worth bearing in mind that
RPC applications have nothing whatsoever to do with XML. The XML is simply a
platform-independent transport protocol for structured, typed data. In pure
RPC web services, no one uses the XML directly. in pure RPC web clients, no
one uses the XML directly.
When you talk about returning an XML string, I suspect it's because both the
web service and the client really are interested in the XML. In such cases,
it is better to use document/literal style. Almost all the work I do is
focussed on XML and involves moving XML documents around. Naturally, at some
stage data must be used to populate XML documents and data must be extracted
from XML documents but that does not detract from the fact that the
documents themselves have status and longevity. As a simple example, suppose
a web service processes purchase orders and returned receipts. Good
implementations would require both types of document to be signed so that,
for accounting purposes or disputes, each document is archived in a form
that is verifiably authentic. You can see that in cases like this, it makes
no sense to sign the SOAP envelopes because such signatures will be
discarded upon receipt. In fact, I often consider dispensing with SOAP
altogether: okay, it supports routing but how many people use SOAP routing?
Some do but for many people, REST is preferable. Take a look at the work
done by the OpenGIS Consortium...not much RPC/SOAP there!
Jeff
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <axis-user@ws.apache.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 10:22 AM
Subject: application design issue
Hey folks,
just got a question on a design issue regarding web services.
I have a rpc web service that returns information as an xml
string.
How would I add this xml to the soap message?? Would I be better off using
JAXM
if I'm doing this as I'm not passing objects just String which bassically
are
documents?
Regards,
James.
--
Between the question and the answer lies free will
