Designing a Web Services interface

[David Thielen]

Hi; I am new to web services and so I’m at a loss as to the best way to design a Web Services interface for our reporting package. Basically the package has 2 input files and a couple of settings and generates an output file. For the architecture of this I have a couple of questions: 1a) If I want C# as well as java apps able to easily interface with the service, is JAX-RPC the way to go? 1b) I can see the request as being either a set of variables (parameters) with a return variable (RPC) – or – as an input SOAP message with some attributes and 2 attachments that returns an attachment (the attachments being all data from a stream – that is not necessarily a file). 1c) And if the answer is not RPC, which of the other 3 axis supported protocols should I use? (And it’s critical that the solution I use is supported by C# and preferably by most other development environments.) 2) I have 2 hash maps I need to pass across. However, it says for C# to not pass hash maps. Any suggestions on the best way to pass the data in hash maps? 3) Does an ArrayList serialize to an array (ie a []) in the SOAP data passed? thanks - dave