[REBOL] Re: Google + SOAP
From: chris:langreiter at: 20-Apr-2002 17:49
> You're not comparing SOAP/XML to REBOL though, are you? That wouldn't
> seem to be a fruitful exercise. One is a protocol and
> meta-markup-language, and the other is a programming language. They're
> both good at what they do.
XML and the XML-related standards are basically a set of representational
constraints, as is every language. REBOL, when used purely as data
representation language (i.e. without any of its
non-declarative/procedural/functional capabilities), is indeed very similar
in capabilities to XML. What lacks, for example, is Unicode, but otherwise
you can most easily translate any piece of XML into a REBOL representation.
But I can do that as well with Java!
, you'll say, and right you are, after
all, that's the point of XML. However - and that is the critical point, IMO,
if you look at the REBOL representation and the Java object serialization
side-by-side, you'll see that while the resulting serialization is
practically incomprehensible to humans without tool support, the REBOL one
is actually simpler than the XML form we started with.
<person>
<name>Chris</name>
<age>22</age>
</person>
person [name "Chris" age 22]
BTW, at http://www.langreiter.com/rebol/google/ you can find a simple
wrapper around some functions the Google API provides, along with useful
features like result caching.
If you're interested in SOAP, you might also be interested in XML-RPC, which
is the simpler predecessor of SOAP (and avoids practically all of the
problems SOAP people have to cope with due to the higher level of
complexity).
http://earl.strain.at/space/rebXR
Carl, one question, however, remains: What is the "official RT way" to write
high-performance, concurrent servers in REBOL? (And no, Rugby is not an
option, because it blocks when executing long-running functions). I have
found no completely compelling way to do so yet.
Best regards,
-- Chris
-- http://www.langreiter.com
