since I don't have a programmers background .... I assume your talking
about OOP, but is there a practical example you can use to explain what
that first sentence meant
-----Original Message-----
From: Barney Boisvert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 8:59 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: Re: First Web Service
Web services are a way for you to make method calls to objects across
the internet, using HTTP as a transport protocol. Now to back up.
I'm going to tell various white lies for the sake of simplicity, but
it shouldn't matter.
In the beginning, you could only call methods on objects that were
stored in physical memory of the same machine. So if I've got an
object, it could only call methods on other objects that were created
within my computer.
Then people decided they needed to be able to call methods on objects
that may or may not be on the same machine, so they started creating
proprietary ways of doing that. Java's RMI is an example. That
allowed to you have a single application running on multiple machines,
because the different machines could talk to each other.
People also decided they wanted to have different systems talk to each
other (Java app talks to a C++ app). So they developed standard
protocols for passing the method calls across the network, so if you
had a client that understood the protocol, it was irrelevant what
language it was implemented in. CORBA is an example.
The people decided that it would be clever to leverage the WWW and
HTTP, because it's so ubiquitous. No more need for hard to implement
standards such as CORBA, because there are already a bazillion
programs that understand HTTP. But that's not going to solve the
whole problem, because it only provides the way to pass information
around, not a way to encode the information so that it can be passed
around.
Enter XML. XML provided a common way to convert complex data into text
(which is what HTTP likes), and like HTTP, there are already a large
number of XML parsers available to choose from, so the cost of entry
is fairly low. Of course, raw XML doesn't work (i encode a structure
one way, you encode it another way, and that doesn't work), so people
invented SOAP, which is a standardized way to encode various types of
objects as XML.
So what do we get with all that? A very common protocol (HTTP), with
a standardized method for encoding objects (SOAP), using a common
encoded format (XML), all passed around a well connected network (the
internet), and most importantly, NOTHING in that whole list is bound
to any specific hardware, software, programming language, or any of
that.
That, in theory, is what web services are. Of course, reality is a
bit different. SOAP isn't supported perfectly across the board,
certian objects can't be converted to XML via SOAP (such as
recordsets), and blah, blah, blah.
cheers,
barneyb
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 20:47:08 -0400, Tim Laureska <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> OK... at the risk of sounding like a cave dweller, I must ask these
> questions.... I'm a fairly basic CF user and have been watching this
> "web services" term being thrown around a lot, said to be the greatest
> thing since sliced bread, etc.... but can somebody give a layman's
> description of what it is and maybe provide a very very very basic
> example of how it can be applied? Or is it something that's just
> useable on very sophisticated sites? Take this excerpt of the PDF
> referenced below:
>
> " ... Enter web services, a communication platform for applications.
> By using a combination of standardized protocols, it allows
applications
> to communicate with each other regardless of their platform or
> programming lanquage. ..." no disrespect meant to the author but
that
> definition is for someone who's been programming for years!
>
> I feel like this web services thing is blowing right by me, but don't
> see any need to explore it.... I read the PDF but just got more
confused
> as to what a web service is, since the article is really focused on CC
> processing.
>
> Also is a CFC (another new thing to me) a type of web service?
>
> Sorry for the basic questions, but I'd like to join in this "web
> services revolution" if it can help me somehow
>
> Is there a good book that Amazon might carry for us cave dwellers that
> might clarify this thing?
>
> Yours truly,
> Lost ball in high grass
--
Barney Boisvert
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
360.319.6145
http://www.barneyb.com
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