[ghns] The relation between GHNS XML and DXS

[Josef Spillner]

Ahoi,

Am Sonntag, 3. Juli 2005 14:08 schrieb Michael Gebhart:
> what I currently don´t understand is the relation between the GHNS XML
> and DXS. DXS is a chance to get more interaction between the user and
> the provider of stuff. Why should a website provide ghns compatibilty,
> when it supports dxs? Or is ghns only for websites, not able to use
> SOAP?

Yes, they are basically different way to access the database. With HTTP or FTP 
protocols, it's possible to upload and download data.
With SOAP, it's possible to upload and download data and to rate contents and 
many other things.

The format for uploads and downloads should therefore be more or less the 
same, but using XML attributes is a bit problematic with SOAP. So instead of
	<author email="mail at foo.org">Mr. Foo</author>,
the SOAP equivalent could be modelled as
	<author>Mr. Foo</author>
	<author-email>mail at foo.org</author-email>

There are also other webservice concepts, beside SOAP: for instance, REST 
works with simple HTTP calls, and it is used in e.g. Flickr (which is Yahoo's 
"Get Hot New Photos" service). The Wikipedia people are also discussing 
whether they should use SOAP or REST. But the good thing is that most of the 
code can be used for those two so we don't have to worry about it much.

But for instance in games, using SOAP or REST is not going to happen, they 
will only implement the download part by fetching an XML file, parsing it and 
fetching the preview and data files. So a good provider will offer normal 
uploads/downloads and a webservice side by side.

Josef