Web Services and DIME

[Lindsay Morsillo]

I'm concerned about using a web service to send what amounts to send an array of shorts - about 600,000 to 1M elements.
I've tried this with a straight SOAP encoding, and it was a nightmare.
I've investigated DIME, which would allow me to add the binary data as an attachment to the SOAP message. What support is there now, and what is coming down the pike for DIME attachments?
Sincerely,
LJM

[Ramesh Nagappan]

DIME packaging is already part of SOAP 1.2 specifications, which is currently released as "Candidate recommendation". Only few SOAP implementations support DIME. But think about SOAP Interoprability before choosing DIME.

[Michael Zalewski]

Another alternative which worked for me.
Put the 1M shorts into a 4M binary file, and put a URL to the file into the SOAP message. It will be pretty easy to code your SOAP implementation to pick up the file.
Or variations on that idea. For example, upload a file to a webserver on the same machine that runs the web service, then give the name of the uploaded file in the SOAP message.