On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, David Forslund wrote: ... > Area charts are also good, especially stacked area charts.
ok, I will implement that next.
I wouldn't implement things unless people find it useful.
... > ???!!! This makes no sense. I guess I don't know what you mean by > callable from URL.
An example may help: Let's say if we call "http://calculator.tools.org/add?a=2&b=3" and get 5 as the returned value, then this is a "callable_from_URL" adding machine.
We do this all the time, but it is simply passing arguments into an existing "application"
or piece of code. This can be done in most any language. JSP does this, so do servlets.
I don't see anything here that has anything to do with Zope or Java.
> I don't think you can execute arbitrary python calls (which is what Zope > is written in) from a URL.
We do this all the time. I write a bunch of python routines and call them by their respective URL. (This is what Zope is, basically.)
Just what is done in Java/JSP. You aren't executing arbitrary python only the code
you have set up to be called by the URL.
> If you could, it would be extremely dangerous.
Certainly, anything this powerful can be dangerous :-), but we can specify access-control and other security policies.
What I've seen on some applications is for a client to pass in arbitrary SQL code to the
server which is then executed. This is what is undesirable. It is not what you are doing,
thus my "dangerous" statement doesn't apply.
> You can't execute arbitrary Java from a URL, but you can cause any kind > of Java to be executed from a URL (that is what JSP is all about).
Right, Zope does more than JSP but Java does more than Python. So, Java + JSP should do about the same as Zope (which includes Python).
I don't fully understand this relationship. JSP can handle arbitrary Java, so I would think
it would be pretty equivalent to Zope, which I guess is what you are saying. JSP is Java,
afterall, so JSP = JSP + Java, or perhaps a little more accurately: JSP = html + Java.
> That is what makes it the most popular language on the Internet today.
for now.... if you don't count Javascript and HTML as languages :-)
I'm not referring to code on the client. There is very little Java today on the client. Java
seems to be the most popular language on the server side of the Internet. Perhaps I
wasn't being precise enough here.
...
> >search. Similarly, I am willing to call Fred's FreeB to generate an X12 > >document. Why not have a graph making web-service? So, who cares how > >Google is implemented behind-the-web-interface (nothing specific against > >Java)? > Sure, but this doesn't necessary make for a robust application.
Robustness requires many more considerations than interface. Staying with our discussion about application interface, an URL-callable interface has important usability advantages.
But has poor security management. What I'm referring to is availability of
a service when needed, not the quality of the interface. If I want to have a system
that works when I want it, I may need to have all the services near by.
> >That's part of the idea behind building ZSVG_Graph and demonstrating the > >"web services" type functionality from the start? > > Web Services has a particular infrastructure implied that I don't know > if Zope supports currently, or not?
I think Zope's current "web services" type capabilities are adequate for our needs. Publishing web services in directories (via WSDL, for example) so that they are easier to re-use, has nothing to do with the ability to construct and use URL-callable programs.
But it has everything to do with calling it a "Web Service". This term has very special meaning in the w3c community.
> Does Zope handle WSDL and what is the XML API for Zope?
>From 2 years ago but is a good summary: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2001-03-27-e.html
> How do I run a XML Style Sheet against an XML document in Zope?
Has a nice tutorial too: http://zopexmlmethods.sourceforge.net/
Very good. But I don't see how this whole approach is any easier to use than
in any other language. The zopexmlmethods document seems very arcane
and disconnected from any other work going on. It supports my impression
that Zope is its own little world. Quite understandable to its community, but
difficult to penetrate from the outside. It would be nice if I could simple
plug in some Java applications into Zope. I can use Java from jython, but jython
doesn't seem to get me any closer to python/zope, which is unfortunate. I would
think that python is python, but having jython talk to python at the language
level doesn't seem to be happening. Am I mistaken?
It appears that is quite trivial to execute python code from Java, but very difficult
to go the other way unless I'm running something like jython. Can I run Zope
with jython? Then I could lnk all of these capabilities together.
If you like, I can setup a live demo too.
> I gather all this can be done, but I've not seen examples of it.
Let me know if you think doing the same thing in Java+JSP is easier!
I'm not sure what the "same thing" is, but using XML/XSLT etc, in Java+JSP is pretty trivial.
You can generate entire web pages with just a couple of lines of code. I'm not sure
how it would be any easier in Zope. It just works out of the box with many JSP systems
(such as Caucho's Resin product). Java and XML are quite tightly coupled with the API
now standardized in the language.
Dave
Best regards,
Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
