use Perl

I'm starting to think that SOAP interoperability is simply a myth.

I have a fairly simple Perl class structure that I'd like to offer to the Oracle/Java-heads as a SOAP API. of course, they no nothing about SOAP, so I'm left with the task of prototyping their Java interface for them. why anybody would program in a language where

Call call = new Call();

actually means something, I'll never understand, but ok, I decided to give it a whirl.

anyone who has enjoyed the beauty of SOAP::Lite knows just how easy is to open up Perl classes via Apache::SOAP, and writing a Perl client is just as simple. have you ever tried to write a standalone Java client to access those classes? it's freaking insane. according to the SOAP::Lite mailing list, people ask for this alot and the answer is always something like "you need to write the java serializer and $otherstuff yourself." fine - if somebody shows me an example of exactly what it takes, including all of the fine details that I need as a non-Java programmer. the best I've been able to do are a few complex examples in Programming Web Services with SOAP, which shows calling a Perl method that returns a blessed hash. however, the example is within a long, complex application and doesn't show calling another method that accesses the stuff within the hash. (yes, I managed to get that running. Java truly sucks.)

I just can't believe that our community hasn't come up with a useful example that we can use to advocate Perl as the preferred backend for a SOAP API.

so, I'd like to issue an open challenge. if you have the ability, write a Java interface for this Perl class:

package My::Class;

sub new {
 my ($class, $newarg) = @_;
 return bless { _new => $newarg }, $class;
}

sub method {
 my ($self, $methodarg) = @_;
 return "new: ", $self->{_new}, ", method: $methodarg";
}
1;

then make it publically available with detailed instructions (all those silly java files, where they go, which xml.apache.org libraries to install, what CLASSPATH should look like, etc). the end result should be a Java interface that performs identically to this SOAP::Lite interface (namely, print "new: bar, method: drink"

use SOAP::Lite
 +autodispatch =>
 uri => 'http://my.server.com/My/Class',
 proxy => 'http://my.server.com/soap';

my $o = My::Class->new('bar');
print $o->method('drink');

if that's not possible, I really don't see any reason to even think about SOAP again.