alternatives to HTTP

[jrefactors]

HTTP is the protocol that how client server communicates. HTTP is on
top of TCP/IP stack. correct?

I want to ask if there are alternatives to HTTP? web services are using
HTTP also?

please advise. thanks!!

 

[Josef Moellers]

HTTP is the protocol that how client server communicates.

Incorrect: HTTP is the protocol that how _web_-clients and _web_-server
communicates.

HTTP is on
top of TCP/IP stack. correct?

Usually, but not necessarily.

I want to ask if there are alternatives to HTTP?

Countless. It simply depends on what you are trying to do. Most often,
the choice of protocol is given by the existing server one wishes to
connect to. If you write your own client _and_ server, feel free to
develop and implement your own protocol.

web services are using
HTTP also?

web services _are_ using HTTP. Almost nobody else uses it.

HTTP as an acronym for "HyperText Transport Protocol", as such, it is
the protocol of choice for transferring hypertext (as in HTML: HyperText
Markup Language) between web-server and web-client.

Other transfer protocols that spring to my mind (errr are shown when
searching /etc/services on a Linux box for the word "transfer") are
FTP: File Transfer Protocol
SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
TFTP: Trivial File Transfer Protocol
SFTP: Simple FTP
NNTP: Network News Transfer Protocol
...

Josef

 

[Johan Poppe]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:

Countless. It simply depends on what you are trying to do. Most often,
the choice of protocol is given by the existing server one wishes to
connect to. If you write your own client _and_ server, feel free to
develop and implement your own protocol.

HTTP provides rather straightforward way of requesting information and
then getting it. It tends to go easily trough firewalls etc, and has
good support in various programming libraries. It is therefore used
widely for all sort of things. But yes, there are alternatives,
including making your own protocol.

web services _are_ using HTTP. Almost nobody else uses it.

That's misleading. The term "Web services" is usually used to describe
a rather specific set of services. (see for example
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_services.html.) HTTP is used for a
lot of other things - most notably the world wide web.

 

[Gregory Toomey]

HTTP is the protocol that how client server communicates. HTTP is on
top of TCP/IP stack. correct?

I want to ask if there are alternatives to HTTP? web services are using
HTTP also?

please advise. thanks!!

There are hundreds of standard protocols: http, https, ftp, DNS, BGP, OSPF,
etc.
They are in documents called Requests for Comments, and there some 3500
documents. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/

You can implement these or make up your own.

gtoomey

 

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Markus_B._Kr=FCger?=]

web services _are_ using HTTP. Almost nobody else uses it.

While most web services use HTTP or HTTPS, they may also use other
message transports, such as SMTP, FTP, RMI, and so on. See, for
instance, the architecture description from the W3C Web Services
Architecture Group:

http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/

 

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Markus_B._Kr=FCger?=]

web services _are_ using HTTP. Almost nobody else uses it.

While most web services use HTTP or HTTPS, they may also use other
message transports, such as SMTP, FTP, RMI, and so on. See, for
instance, the architecture description from the W3C Web Services
Architecture Group:

http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/

 

[Kevin McMurtrie]

HTTP is the protocol that how client server communicates. HTTP is on
top of TCP/IP stack. correct?

I want to ask if there are alternatives to HTTP? web services are using
HTTP also?

please advise. thanks!!

What are the your goals? HTTP is often used as a base because it is not
only extensible, but easy to trim down too. HTTP variations include
WebDAV for file access, SOAP for system-independent remote method
invocation, SIP for phones, and many more.

There are also older protocols like FTP, SMTP, NNTP, Gopher, Telnet,
etc. I think SFTP has its own protocol too. There's serialized Java
objects over RMI.

SOAP and Java RMI are common for web services but software development
for them can be so labor-intensive that few find it worth the effort.
It would have to be a big, long-term project that's dedicated to web
services before you'd start to see gains in development efficiency. You
can always make up your own protocol for smaller tasks. Utilities like
Castor make it easy to send complex data as XML streams.