[WEB4LIB] re: web services

[Eric Hellman]

1Cate has always had a REST interface. JAKE had an OpenURL based web 
services interface 5 years ago.

Perhaps I should explain. The basic difference between SOAP and REST 
is pretty simple:

SOAP
client ----XML-----> service ------XML------> client

REST
client ----URL-----> service -----XML------> client


Library software has always suffered, I think, from being ahead of 
its time. In the case of web services, Z39.50 was one of the first 
widely deployed standards-based web services. So now we have 
libraries standardized around a type of web-service that was invented 
before the existence of technologies that that enable the current 
generation of web-services implementations, and Z web services are 
irrelevant outside the library world.

it's important to remember that both SOAP and REST are layers on XML, 
whereas Z39.50 is a complete application (when you include profiles). 
Just because two pieces of software support SOAP or REST doesn't mean 
they can be used together. Someone still has to develop the 
application. So if you're in a position to write an RFP, try to 
specify that your vender provide well documented APIs that you can 
provide to other developers without NDA. Any developer will tell you 
that the documentation of a web-services API is more important than a 
particular web-service flavor.

Eric



>Hi,
>
>I'm a Developer for SFX, and I just wanted to mention in relation to
>this topic that we have added SOAP support to the new SFX Ver. 3.
>Originally this was implemented just to allow different SFX servers to
>communicate with each other in a consortium environment, but it can be
>used by anyone to communicate with SFX in a standard way. I guess some
>people might be interested in using it in their own applications.
>
>Regards,
>
>--
>Andres Monroy-Hernandez

-- 

Eric Hellman, President                            Openly Informatics, Inc.
eric at openly.com                                    2 Broad St., 2nd Floor
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://www.openly.com/1cate/      1 Click Access To Everything