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We’ve been looking at raw SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL messages. You might be glad to hear that there are many vendor and open-source tools available for Web Services that insulate a programmer from raw XML. Web Services are for distributed computing, and there is no guarantee that the messages sent by computers to other computers will be readily understandable. The SOAP message we saw in Listing 1-9 was very simple. If more complex objects, rather than basic strings, need to be sent in a SOAP message, then a SOAP platform is certainly required.
XMLSpy is a very useful and highly regarded tool for manipulating XML, XML Schema, and WSDL, amongst other formats. It is available at www.altova.com. JAX (Java API for XML) allows XML processing to take place in Java programs. IDEs such as Visual Studio.NET may be used to manipulate XML also. We will see these tools used extensively in later chapters.
The major application servers all support Web Services. In Chapter 10, we’ll see how Microsoft .NET leverages Web Services for application integration across the full battery of .NET servers. Pure-play Web Services companies such as Cape Clear also produce Web Services development and deployment tools, including tools for UDDI.
A number of script-based tools are available also, including Perl’s SOAP::Lite module.
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