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

I'm looking at something similar, so I'll throw out some ideas for you.
Have you looked at creating the backend as a web service? This gets you an RPC with generality and flexibility. I'm finding this an attractive possibility for a system I'm designing.
The hitch in the whole thing is that I need to xfer large binary data as a return from the web service. This is slow in the SOAP world, so I'm looking at DIME to package the binary data.
You might want to look down these avenues - it'll trigger some ideas regardless.
Sincerely,
Lindsay

I'm looking at DIME to enscapulate the binary portion of a web service return value. The key element is I need to xfer a chunk (about 2Meg) of data and I do like the model of Soap-RPC architecturally.
Unfortunately, a webservice prototype to do this without DIME takes about 10 seconds each call. The data gets base64'ed or chunked into an array of a few hundred thousand int's.
In comparison, a 'direct' method with the client connecting via a URLConnection and DataStream performs the same work in under 2 seconds. But with out the nieceties of the SOAP-RPC
I've seen a DIME implementation in .Net which used SOAP Extensions and since I'm not clear on how Soap extensions work, I've got more questions now than ever.

What's the interaction of SOAP and Extensions?

Are there any examples of DIME for Java available?

Has anyone used DIME & Soap-RPC in a production environment? How did it work out?

Has anyone solved this sort of problem already, but in a different manner? How?

Thanks for the help.
Sincerely,
Lindsay Morsillo

Hi Brian,
Are there any specific new security problems introduced when using DIME to send binary data from a web service? What reccomendations do you have to provide adequate security?
I also want to say that I agree wholeheartedly with your pragmatic view of security. I think that if an organization realizes that their security isn't perfect, that it is possible for someone who is determined to perpetrate some form of fraud or mischief to do so, everyone in the organization will be more alert and vigilant. Complacency is itself a vulnerability.
I've found in many eCommerce ventures that the most profitable thefts were not based solely on a technolical flaw, but also other vulnerabilities in the chain of operations. Particularly in the realm of credit cards. Don't forget that 'Dumpster diving' is still a great source of information for those that would steal.
Anyways, I'd appreciate any tidbits you could pass along regarding DIME.
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Lindsay Morsillo