Is Web Services/SOAP truly language neutral? Can I use COBOL, RPG?

[Bruce Jin]

Does Web Services/SOAP truly language neutral? Can I use COBOL, RPG to write Web Service functions?
It seems easy to use Java, VB, C# in web services. How about COBOL, RPG, PLI�?
Thanks.
Bruce

[William Brogden]

Since a SOAP message is transmitted in plain text, it is hard to see how it could be any more open. Of course, having an XML parser in your language of choice is nice but not necessary.
Bill
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author of:

• Java 2 Exam Prep
  
• Java 2 (Exam Cram)
  
• Java Developer's Guide to Servlets and JSP
  
• Java Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with XML and JS
  

[Andy Rodriguez]

Were you thinking of Cobol on os/390 or more like Object cobol ? ..Kidding , it really doesnt matter what language you would use , take for instance SAP jumping onto the bandwagon with Others and deciding to webservice enable SAP ! ( Yes to java and "proprietary technology" - which i would prefer reading SAPkobol and no to .NET ) http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,5099254,00.html
Oh about cobol , you wouldnt be able to run webservices off a mainframe yet using Cobol and CICS , will have to make do with JCA ( if you cant afford middleware ) for now .

Originally posted by Bruce Jin:
Does Web Services/SOAP truly language neutral? Can I use COBOL, RPG to write Web Service functions?
It seems easy to use Java, VB, C# in web services. How about COBOL, RPG, PLI�?
Thanks.
Bruce

[Bruce Jin]

Thank you all.
I will dig into this and see if I really can webservice enable one or two RPG programs on an AS400.
By the way Bill I enjoy reading your Java 2 Exam Cram book. I am now busy playing EJB and SOAP and can�t make time to go for the exam.
Bruce

[faisal mahmood]

That's what impression I had as well. If anything is language independant then it is also platform independant because of Java.
I think those languages need to have an implementation of Webservices to make it to work. For example if no one makes an implementation of Pascal then you cannot have webservices using that language.
It's like Java. If you don't have JVM implemenation for some OS then you cannot have java programs running on them.
Faisal

[William Brogden]

A single SOAP service can be very simple - I wrote a couple just for examples in the book I am working on. You don't HAVE to have XML or anything but string manipulation on the system that responds to a SOAP request with a SOAP response. Remember, those messages are pure text.
Bill

[Kyle Brown]

Web Services are absolutely language neutral. In fact, IBM fully supports Web Services with an advanced SOAP implementation that handles stub and proxy generation from WSDL and connection to UDDI in VisualAge Smalltalk . In fact, sometimes new features come out in the Smalltalk release before the Apache Java code is done. (Which makes for some good natured competition since the developers are all close friends)
Kyle
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Kyle Brown,
Author of Enterprise Java (tm) Programming with IBM Websphere
See my homepage at http://members.aol.com/kgb1001001 for other WebSphere information.