On Wed, Oct 31, 2001 at 10:35:01AM +0100, Theo van Veen wrote:
> The use of SOAP makes things more complex and it will certainly
> result in a higher implementation barrier. Maybe it is a stupid
> question but I am wondering now what is the added value of SOAP in this
> standard. I know it makes sense in case on none-ascii input.

To me the value of SOAP is Microsoft .NET. .NET includes native
SOAP support. There are lots of SOAP toolkits around too
(Java, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Ace, .NET, ...).

So while there may be an argument that writing a ZNG server
from first principles to be SOAP conformant is non trival
(and it is - there are serveral irky things in SOAP), I would
be saying 'use a SOAP toolkit'. The benefit of SOAP will be
in the ability to express more than just what you can put nicely
in a URL, and that I *personally* believe SOAP will become
the normal way of submitting such requests in the future, not URLs.

My 2 cents worth anyway

Alan