[Serusers] What do you have against SOAP? (was Carrier-grade framework for SER)

[David R. Kompel]

Greger and everyone else that is interested,

Please consider before ruling out SOAP, that SOAP has more off the shelf
libraries to support it then XMLRPC. Please consider the folks that use
Microsoft platforms for their back end processing and databases, and
keep in mind the following:

Yukon is just around the corner. It has SOAP services built in, as well
as the ability to call SOAP services directly from T-SQL. 

Also we implement a carrier grade platform using SER, which is in use by
a number of VoIP providers here, with the following extensions:

1) An extra module which allows for RADIUS URI translation, extended AVP
lookup, via extra string parameter which lets you identify what AVP
query you wish to do, and an extra flag in the registration database
"FOREIGN" registration, to identify a contact which has been replicated
from another SER server.

2) A service which speaks SOAP to he outside world, (it's own http
server on non-standard port) to allow an external interface to the SER
FIFO interface. It use is for external Voicemail MWI Notifies, and to
send refresh, reboot and report notify messages to SIP devices.

3) A generic provisioning server for almost any SIP device, which can be
provisioned via TFTP, HTTP, or HTTPS. This server dynamically builds
configuration files in memory on the fly for any device based on RE
pattern matching of the filename, mapped to SQL statement, which returns
device parameters. 

With just these above three things, we can implement a full carrier
grade system, with full automated device provisioning, all CLASS 5
features, such as unlimited level hunting, recursive call forwarding
(even when each device in the forwarding has a different dial plan) and
just about anything else you can think of. To accomplish this, we depend
on SOAP as a method of component communication because we consider any
platform, including Microsoft and the ".NET framework" as things we need
to interact with.

If your goal is to provide a framework for integrating with other
platforms, SOAP bring a lot more flexibility to the game, and make it
more compatible with more platforms.

Remember, this is just an opinion, however it needed to be expressed,
just so you know what other folks are doing with SER.

--Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: serusers-bounces at iptel.org [mailto:serusers-bounces at lists.iptel.org] On
Behalf Of Greger V. Teigre
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 11:29 PM
To: Juha Heinanen
Cc: serusers at lists.iptel.org
Subject: Re: [Serusers] Carrier-grade framework for SER

Juha,
Yes, I completely agree with you. However, I don't need to read the spec
and 
far from understand it before I use it... ;-)  So I did start to look at

SOAP and have very good experiences, both in terms of usability and 
scalability.
    But, I don't have strong opinions, if the people who are going to
use 
the interface are all against SOAP, XMLRPC is the right choice.

The xmlrpc-provisioning work you have done, can it be coordinated with 
Andreas' effort?
g-)

Juha Heinanen wrote:
> Greger V. Teigre writes:
>
>> As I indicated in an earlier email, I would be interested in taking
>> part in a joint effort to further develop ser's high-availability
>> and scalability (HAS).  I would probably have to do some development
>> anyway, and I would prefer to see such support in the public domain.
>> In Nov/Dec I called for responses on a SOAP-based provisioning
>> interface, but heard nothing,
>> so here is an overlap of interests.
>
> greger,
>
> we have done some work on xmlprc based provisioning and it looks
> promising.  xmlrpc spec is three pages long and even i can understand
> it.  soap spec, on the other hand, is far too thick and goes way above
> my head.
>
> -- juha 

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