Re: providing web services via HTTPAPI

[Scott Klement <sk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Elden_Fenison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>    We'd like to provide something like web services using this
>    methodology. However, I'm not seeing any real examples of this. I
>    would presume that XML would be the best way to communicate between
>    the client and server. Has anyone on the list done anything like this?
>    Is there a better way to provide web services that would be more
>    robust and/or more straightforward?

I think it'd be more robust and straightforward to use the HTTP server 
that comes with i5/OS instead of trying to write your own HTTP server 
from the ground up.

You can have the HTTP server launch an RPG program and pass it data 
using the CGI interface.  Then, your RPG program doesn't have to worry 
about sockets or the HTTP protocol or anything like that.  All it has to 
do is receive the XML data and parse it, then send back a new XML 
document in response.

WebSphere and PHP are also good alternatives.  They'll do more of the 
work for you than doing it manually (via parsing your own XML, and 
creating your own XML response) but of course they require you to 
understand PHO and/or Java.   In the case of WebSphere, there's also 
additional costs, and hardware requirements that have to be accounted for.

Good luck
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