[fpc-devel] Web Service Toolkit For FPC & Lazarus

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Inoussa OUEDRAOGO wrote:

>> Does it overlap regarding functionality?
>
> This package have a different goal; The primary goal is to expose
> services as normal fpc interfaces by providing a proxy implementation
> as Delphi does; please take a look at the doc file.

It is interesting to see this, as it is complementary to the fpRPC
mechanism.

Before I would include it in the FCL, there is additional work:

1. Use a plug-in architecture for the transport layer.
    Hardcoded transport using Indy is good for a first version, but
    an RPC mechanism should be independent of the transport layer.

2. Use a messaging system which is not necessarily XML based.
    XML introduces serious overhead.

3. The creation of SOAP services should be included as well.
    (like xml-RPC)

In my opinion, an RPC mechanism needs 3 parts:

- Interface description and generation. You have this in one
   direction, and fpRPC also has this in the other direction.

- Message handling. Message can be XML, SOAP, binary, whatever.
   XML is portable, but slow.

- Transport handling. Transport can be HTTP (using Indy, Lcl, Synapse,
   whatever) or Windows WM_COPY transport, local socket, named pipes,
   shared memory: whatever. This is independent of the message.

These 2 last parts are separate from each other and from the first part:
it should be possible, at any stage, to replace one part with another.

Your implementation definitely has the potential to do this. If you have
ideas of how to achieve what I describe here, I'll be glad to discuss an
implementation with you !

Michael.