From: Paul Prescod <paul@...>
Date: 2002-04-16T18:37:13+09:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Stop Using SOAP, Before It's Too Late

Curt Hibbs wrote:
> 
> Erik Terpstra wrote:
> >
> > I would like to suggest to have a look at REST instead if you are
> > looking for a
> > better alternative:
> >
> > http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2002/02/06/rest.html
> > http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2002/02/20/rest.html

Interesting to stumble upon this while I was skimming the Ruby group!

I am just a poor hobbit in a battle between wizards. I am looking for
other mortals to join the quest. 

I am writing an xml.com article on how the Google API could and should
have been done without SOAP. Is there someone out there who would be
willing to implement, set up, run and maintain a simple passthrough
application. It can be written in any language you like: a good
opportunity to advertise Ruby.

It should take HTTP query parameters (like OLD-STYLE Google paramters):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=beachcombers+television

And translate it into one of these new, silly SOAP calls, and then make
the call against Google. We could also passthrough the end-user's Google
key so the service could handle an arbitrary number of requests per day.
I don't think it is necessary for it to be ultimately scalable but I
won't take responsibility if it gets slashdotted! I don't care if it
falls over if it gets loaded, but if you need it for your day to day
work you might!

This should be not a lot of work for anyone with web experience and a
network connected box. Because the Google API is timely I would like it
if it could be done in a few days or a week or so (the article is coming
along well).

If you have the box but no time to implement, I could write the CGI, but
I would write it in Python (boo, hiss) so you would need to install
Python on the box.

 Paul Prescod