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Amazon.com Associates: XML Developers


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Launch of new Amazon Web Services forums |  AWS Blog  |  AWS FAQs  
 General (Read-Only Folder) -  SOAP Interface... 
 
From: Byrne Reese  4/17/2002 6:38 pm 
To: ALL  (1 of 22) 
 25.1 
It would be awesome if this was exposed as a SOAP interface. I realize that getting and XML interface over HTTP is huge, but you would be able integrate more seemlessly with many SOAP toolkits (.net, Axis, SOAP::Lite, etc) if it was exposed as a web service.
 
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From: jimmy@used-disks.com  4/17/2002 9:52 pm 
To: Byrne Reese  (2 of 22) 
 25.2 in reply to 25.1 
I totally agree.... SOAP is much higher-level and easy to use than "just" XML. Now everyone who wants to use this service has to write their own routines to get the data they want instead of the more simple method of accessing a SOAP object.
 
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From: losdude  4/18/2002 12:41 am 
To: Byrne Reese  (3 of 22) 
 25.3 in reply to 25.1 

I have already written a C# SOAP interface to this and am refining it.  I originally wrote into Amazon telling them about this, but no one seemed interested at the time.  Personally, in my neck of the woods, no one uses Perl to access something like this that could SO EASILY be rendered with a SINGLE LINE OF CODE.  I think it's neat in Perl, but it's WAY too much work for what REALLY could be accomplished here.

If anyone would like to see my version, let me know and I'll send the URL to what I'm currently using.

 
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From: massimogentilini  4/18/2002 3:22 am 
To: losdude  (4 of 22) 
 25.4 in reply to 25.3 

I agree with you, a SOAP interface is a must have. Can you provide a link to see your interface in action???

Greetings from Italy

Massimo

 
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From: Peter Bowyer  4/18/2002 2:08 pm 
To: ALL  (5 of 22) 
 25.5 in reply to 25.1 

I disagree.  A REST interface is, IMHO, more appropriate for this kind of service.  This is not only my view, but also that of others I have talked to comparing Amazon.com's offering with that of Google.

Web services are still immature, and who's to say that SOAP, with its patent problems is the right choice?

 
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From: losdude  4/21/2002 7:24 pm 
To: Peter Bowyer unread  (6 of 22) 
 25.6 in reply to 25.5 
There aren't any 'patent' problems with SOAP.  SOAP is an open standard for protocol, schemas, etc.  Not only that, Google announced a SOAP interface to their search tool.  Web services are slightly new at this point, but they're growing.  This should be the tool of choice, especially for something like this.
 
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From: Roy Levien  4/22/2002 11:04 am 
To: Peter Bowyer unread  (7 of 22) 
 25.7 in reply to 25.5 
Patent problems?
 
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From: Roy Levien  4/22/2002 11:07 am 
To: ALL  (8 of 22) 
 25.8 in reply to 25.6 
Agreed! The feature-set that Amazon is providing with XML is nice. But the URL-request / Document-return model is just too messy to maintain. After a few projects using web services (with .NET) I'm totally hooked. I wait to use Amazon's XML features until they are re-packaged as a web service. Anything else is just to awkward to maintain -- and why bother when there is such an excellent alternative.
 
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From: losdude  4/23/2002 2:00 am 
To: ALL  (9 of 22) 
 25.9 in reply to 25.8 
Ok, I'm going to re-write this class and I'll submit it to this forum for all to use.
 
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From: Allan Engelhardt  4/24/2002 5:26 pm 
To: losdude  (10 of 22) 
 25.10 in reply to 25.6 
> There aren't any 'patent' problems with SOAP.

SOAP got caugt up in the whole RAND discussion (see W3.org) which should now be settled.

> SOAP is an open standard for protocol, schemas, etc.

SOAP is, as far as I can tell, a PROPOSED WORKING GROUP to come up with a standard, rather than a defined and W3C approved standard. The reference document is only a NOTE, not a recommendation:

http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/

Still, it is pretty solid :-)

Some reasons not to use SOAP

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1314
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1298

but you have lots of choice:

http://www.w3.org/2000/03/29-XML-protocol-matrix

> This should be the tool of choice, especially for something like this.

Possibly. But there are no standards yet (see the matrix above). Arguably, SOAP is way over-kill for what Amazon is trying to do here; I can only think of justifying it if you need WSDL, but you probably don't for this service? If all you got is a hammer...

Still, I'd like to see a SOAP interface if just for the fun of programming it :-)

My £0.02.

Allan.

Edited 4/24/2002 5:31:15 PM ET by Allan Engelhardt
 
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