web services.

[danjourno]

Can anyone reccomend programming languages for developing XML web services in? I'm quite new to the concept, and am developing on a unix based system. I'm considering PHP, Java or Python. Do any of these lend themselves better towards this sort of thing in terms of ease of programming, stability, and speed of execution?

Thanks
Dan

 

[Andy Dingley]

Can anyone reccomend programming languages for developing XML web services in?

Java. It's what all the cool kids use.

No-one "writes" web services these days. Instead you install a middleware product, that does it for you, and you write to the middleware's API instead. It cuts out a lot (a _lot_) of tiresome rote work. The good middlewares are for Java, so Java is what you write in. Ones to look at are WebLogic, WebSphere and (open source) JBoss.

If you're devoted to Perl, then SOAP:Lite will be your friend. But that's a definitley lower level than the other options. Not bad for simple clients, but I wouldn't want to build huge architectures around it.

There's also .Net - that means C# if you're doing anything serious and most services, or VB.Net if you're building quick UI's.

 

[GIMME]

Java is the industry standard ... unless you work at some nerd company like IBM that uses Python and APL. PHP is used by some small and midsize companies.

If you really want to see how web services are used, get a project going using Apache's AXIS package.