From: Tim Becker <a2800276@...>
Date: 2007-03-05T01:44:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Solution consuming .NET SOAP service

On 3/4/07, Tim Perrett <freestyle_kayaker@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I have been trying to consume a .NET exposed web-service with soap4r and
> have found some things that might help others when doing the same thing


I too have found soap very difficult to work with. It doesn't
necessarily help that soap4r is virtually undocumented. Here's the
approach that ended up working for a particularly troublesome wdsl: I
generated a client using apache axis, ran a couple of tests, sniffed
the traffic and generated templates from the xml axis produced for the
call. Then picked the responses apart using REXML. Not pretty, but it
works well enough and was easier than guessing around with soap4r.

Just my opinion: Soap itself is entirely convoluted, if you really
need xml overhead for rpc (hint: you don't) it should at least be
human readable, xmlrpc I can live with, I don't see the point of soap.
   -tim