Since postings seem to be a bit slow lately, I thought that I would
bring up the subject of Web Services.

What are Web Services and how would we do them using QM?

Thanks

Eugene

  It's any programmatic service you can consume using the HTTP  
protocol. Typically it is XML based, but it can be anything from a  
SOAP interface to a proprietary text comm service.

Glen.mobile
RewriteRule ^(garbage|junk)$ /$1 [NC,L]

On Oct 30, 2009, at 12:47 PM, eppick77 <eppic...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Oct 30, 12:47 pm, eppick77 <eppic...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Glen has essentially described it.  Most entities offer web services
in order to expose a part of their business system to third party use
and/or development.

For instance, you could have a regular web site that customers log
into so that they can review their order status by viewing pages in
their web browser.  This is a web site, not a web service,

Now, if you exposed an API by which that same customer could write a
client (typically http) to receive that order status information in a
mutually understood format (typically XML), then they could "consume"
and work with that information as they desire.  Examples might be to
display that information in a GUI client, or to feed that data into a
supply chain management system.

Web services are not limited to "read only".  The API you expose is
only limited to your requirements.  So, you could allow customers not
only to review orders, but also to modify existing and place new ones.

There are many different ways to get the same result, but ultimately
you want to provide a server that communicates via HTTP in order to
facilitate the transfer of information in a known format (typically
XML). You might be able to accomplish this with Coyote, but there are
other ways.  I typically use a "middleware" approach, using a separate
http server to broker communication between http clients and QM.  On
the QM side, I'm just calling Basic subroutines.

httpClient <- http/xml -> httpServer <--> QM/QMClienLib/QMBasic

Not too long ago I put together a demo download for simple web
services on D3.  I'll see if I can throw something together that you
can try out on QM.

--
Kevin Powick

Kevin,

That would be great.

Thanks

On Oct 30, 2:00 pm, Kevin Powick <kpow...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sockets provide a low-level pipe for moving data.
Protocols like Telnet, SMTP, HTTP, and FTP are designed to move
data over a socket in a specific way.
Web Services provide a general purpose pipe, usually according to
the SOAP specifications, so that you can move any kind of data
you want between departments, companies, applications, and
devices.

The term "Web Services" most often specifically relates to a
well-defined XML document format (SOAP) which defines the
payload.  Like EDI, the details of the SOAP payload often
requires discussion between the people on both sides of the pipe.
That sort of flies in the face of "general purpose", and it's one
of the reasons why Web Services isn't as ubiquitous as it should
be.

Look at a Web Service as a means of abstracting your MV
application, so that you can get other developers to use your
system, and you can make use of other applications, without
either side knowing how each back-end is doing their part.  In
other words - your trading partners can integrate with your app
without ever hearing the word Pick.  Web Services are also a
vehicle for exposing an API to your application so that someone
can develop a GUI for your app without knowing Pick or BASIC.

AJAX performs a "web service"-like function (note lower case) of
moving data around, but the structure of the data is completely
open to the developer.  You could use AJAX to move data from a
browser to a web server, Web Services to interact between the web
server and your office (if the web server is hosted somewhere),
and something like QMClient to process the request with your
application.  That's the nature of n-tier architectures.

For anyone selling an app, or end-users who get requests for
people to make use of MV-based data, creating a series of Web
Services is a fast and no-cost/no-cost way to add value to your
offering and make a lot of people happy.

Articles:
nospamNebula-RnD.com/spectrum/index.htm
Four-part series for Spectrum on Web Services explains how .NET
is and is not related to WS.

Blog:
nospamNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/2007/02/soa1.html
That entry provides several examples for using Web Services as
part of Service Oriented Architecture.  Most of my blogs are
related to this in some way, where Web Services can be used as
the connecting pipe with Flex/Flash, devices, Outlook and Excel,
trading partners, Twitter, Facebook, LAMP-based apps, and
anything else that you want to connect into MV.

Video:
nospamNebula-RnD.com/products/gallery.htm
See "Click this link to begin viewing a video which shows how to
create a .NET Web Service which extracts data from the MV DBMS
using mv.NET".

Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Nebula R&D sells mv.NET and other Pick/MultiValue products
worldwide, and provides related development services
remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog
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