RPG SOAP Web service?

[BenThurley]

We have quite a few web services in production now. In some cases we are consuming a SOAP web service and in other cases we have provided a stripped down web service for other applications to call into the AS400. Increasingly though we are being asked to provide proper SOAP web services on the AS400.

My personal preference would be to develop a Java web service running under tomcat which just calls the RPG program using PCML. This would be a doddle given the web service utilities you get with the metro project. Unfortunately most of the other developers here only know RPG and the client I am thinking of in particular is a Javaphobe.

Does anyone know of any RPG equivalent to Java's metro project? I have had a look using Google but can only find examples using Java. There are also these guys http://www.rpg-xml.com/ but they don't explain how their product works. In the "how it works" section of the site it just says "OK - It's not as easy as it looks.". Why bother with a how it works section if you're not going to explain! How patronising!

We could of course write WSDL's manually for the stripped down web services we currently create but it adds a lot of unnecessary overhead.

Any thoughts on this would be welcomed.
Thanks

[littlepd]

Re: RPG SOAP Web service?

For consuming SOAP web services, check this out.

For building SOAP web services from RPG programs, try this.

[BenThurley]

Re: RPG SOAP Web service?

Thanks,

It's funny I was looking at the IBM stuff but it started going on about requiring websphere application server and I switched off. I didn't notice this one that looks to be installed already.

I managed to find out a bit more about the www.rpg-xml.com solution. If you ignore the "how it works" section and instead delve a little deeper there are some documents on there explaining that it is all RPG and apache based. It's basically a port of the kind of code generators you get with the metro project. This is the sort of thing I was looking for but I'm a bit wary of anything being sold on a website that looks thrown together.

I've whittled it down to the following options.

1. Write something ourselves
2. Use Java and tomcat
3. Use the web services server for i

I think these give a range of flexibillity, ease to deploy and choice of languages/platforms.

Thanks again

[aaronbartell]

Re: RPG SOAP Web service?

I managed to find out a bit more about the www.rpg-xml.com solution. If you ignore the "how it works" section and instead delve a little deeper there are some documents on there explaining that it is all RPG and apache based. It's basically a port of the kind of code generators you get with the metro project. This is the sort of thing I was looking for but I'm a bit wary of anything being sold on a website that looks thrown together.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the critique on the website. I assure you that it wasn't thrown together and was developed by professional creative personalities but that obviously wasn't your impression so we will review it to see what we can change. I can answer any questions you have about RPG-XML Suite offline (I assume vendor speak isn't allowed on this forum). Contact me at abartell@krengeltech.com

On a final note, if you are looking for a quick start guide to offering a web service on the IBM i using open source desktop tools and RPG-XML Suite then you may want to check out this 15 minute tutorial: http://rpg-xml.com/video/rpg_web_ser...om_scatch.html

Thanks,
Aaron Bartell

http://mowyourlawn.com

[BenThurley]

Re: RPG SOAP Web service?

Thanks for replying.

I have already compiled a quick list of options for the higher ups to review. It's not an immediate requirement but just an analysis on how we might improve on something we are already providing. I think the IBM web services server is the one we will probably look into first although it does appear to have some drawbacks i.e. no session handling.

[jamief]

Re: RPG SOAP Web service?

aaron - Nice to see you on the forums...

Please feel free - Vendor speak from you would be fine.
but please don't try to peddle nylons and chocolate - that where we draw the line!

Jamie