Re: SOAP, WSDL

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Michael Albinus <address@hidden> writes:
>>>>> Ivan Shmakov <address@hidden> 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.

        My experience with SOAP is very limited, but I believe I’ve
        stumbled over one or two which do not.

[…]

 >> (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.

        JFTR, – I’m not arguing against the merits of having a
        machine-readable API description.  Still, soap-client.el
        effectively requires the /user/ to supply one if it wasn’t
        provided by the service itself, – and I don’t think that’s all
        that helpful.

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