What is the alternative to SQL SOAP client procedures?

[Breck_Carter]

According to this post, one of the reasons wsdlc.exe was removed was that "its existence for generating SQL SOAP client procedures for SQL Anywhere web services was thought to be no longer justified given the decreasing popularity of SOAP."

I don't care that much about wsdlc.exe per se, but I do care about this apparent "decreasing popularity of SOAP"... where is this documented, described, or otherwise apparent?

What is the alternative, within SQL Anywhere, to using SQL SOAP client procedures to converse with, say, eBay?

(I really like avoiding pitfalls, so thanks in advance for clueing me in 🙂

[MarkCulp · Accepted solution]

You can still use / provide SOAP web services from a SQL Anywhere server/database and consume SOAP web services using web service RPC calls.... but you will need to write the web service calls "manually" rather than using a tool like wsdlc. (FWIW, you can always use wsdlc from a pre-16 installation to generate the web service declaration - it will still work in SA 16).

As I posted in a comment to the other post, IMHO I would say that the recommended alternative would be to use JSON or simple XML. JSON is a much lighter weight representation and is easily consumed and generated by Javascript (if you happen to be consuming / generating it from a web app running within a browser). Even simple XML is more understandable than SOAP. SA 16 includes tools to consume (using sa_parse_json system procedure) and generate JSON (using FOR JSON clause) to make this an easier task.

[Breck_Carter · Accepted solution]

So it's OK that SOAP has remained a mystery to me? Apparently so.

Here is a sentence that Mark included in his comment on the wsdlc.exe thread but omitted here; I am including it because it really resonates with me:

"SOAP is such a complicated "standard" - the "standard" is so large and extensive that everyone does it their own (different) way."

Funny that the "S" stands for "Simple" 🙂

[VolkerBarth · Accepted solution]

Funny that the "S" stands for "Simple" 🙂

I have to contradict: To cite from Wikipedia

SOAP originally stood for 'Simple Object Access Protocol' but this acronym was dropped with Version 1.2 of the standard.

Apparently, the WWW consortium has itself corrected the wrong notion of a "simple protocol".