Special Edition Using SOAP

Creating a Middle-Tier Component

You might ask what could be so different about creating the middle-tier component than simply moving data from the server to a SOAP message. The problem is that SOAP doesn’t handle odd data formats very well. The server-side component in Listing 8.4 outputs an array using a variant. Theoretically, SOAP will handle an array without problems. In fact, if we create a component that simply passes the data along as shown in Listing 8.5, the various WSDL generators will generate the correct output (except for 4S4C in this case). Figure 8.6 shows typical output.

Figure 8.6. The WSDL output looks correct, but won’t generate a good result.

Listing 8.5. Just Passing the Data to SOAP as Shown Here Won’t Work

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