Consuming Microsoft .NET SOAP server datasets in PHP

Microsoft Just Clowning Around Again

If you're impatient here is the link that this article leads to

SOAP is generally understood to be a simple method for systems to exchange data in a standard manner. This allows for remote systems to make calls on a server application. This sounds like a Good Idea.

Microsoft, however, does not appear to fully understand the concept of SOAP when it comes to providing a SOAP server based on "datasets".

Apparently the use of these datasets make it much easier for programmers using Microsoft languages to consume web services.
Unfortunately it makes it inconvenient for everybody else.

So we have a standard way of doing things, but Microsoft decides to "improve" it and thereby forces everybody else to manually parse their XML responses. What is the point of having a standard method of accessing server methods if Microsoft then makes their implementation inoperable to Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, developers?

Isn't the whole idea of SOAP to allow remote access? So why make things difficult for everybody except the people who choose Microsoft as their vendor for Server, Desktop, Development IDE, Programming Language, Email, and Security? What about somebody who wants to use a vendor other than Microsoft for one of these software services? Is it technically better? Is it better for a client to be locked into a vendor? Or does Microsoft make more money by trying to force you to make them your vendor for all software?

Well in any case, if you are trying to consume a Microsoft dataset SOAP packet you will end up needing to write your own helper classes to decipher their code. That's the bad news. Trust me, I asked on Stackoverflow, Googled extensively (I didn't use Bing to search though, maybe I should have), and otherwise checked and rechecked why I was not able to handle the SOAP packets being returned by the Microsoft server.

PHP developers can use this code (http://www.bin-co.com/php/scripts/xml2array/) as a start to developing their class. The code given there will help shortcut the process of reading the Microsoft dataset SOAP response. If anybody has similar solutions for other languages please feel free to forward them to me.

Comments

Solving Doctrine - A new entity was found through the relationship

There are so many different problems that people have with the Doctrine error message: exception 'Doctrine\ORM\ORMInvalidArgumentException' with message 'A new entity was found through the relationship 'App\Lib\Domain\Datalayer\UnicodeLookups#lookupStatus' that was not configured to cascade persist operations for entity: Searching through the various online sources was a bit of a nightmare. The best documentation I found was at http://www.krueckeberg.org/ where there were a number of clearly explained examples of various associations. More useful information about association ownership was in the Doctrine manual , but I found a more succinct explanation in the answer to this question on StackOverflow . Now I understood better about associations and ownership and was able to identify exactly what sort I was using and the syntax that was required. I was implementing a uni-directional many to one relationship, which is supposedly one of the most simpl...

Grokking PHP monolog context into Elastic

An indexed and searchable centralized log is one of those tools that once you've had it you'll wonder how you managed without it. I've experienced a couple of advantages to using a central log - debugging, monitoring performance, and catching unknown problems. Debugging Debugging becomes easier because instead of poking around grepping text logs on servers you're able to use a GUI to contrast and compare values between different time ranges. A ticket will often include sparse information about the problem and observed error, but if you know more or less when a problem occurred then you can check the logs of all your systems at that time. Problem behaviour in your application can occur as a result of the services you depend on. A database fault will produce errors in your application, for example. If you log your database errors and your application errors in the same central platform then it's much more convenient to compare behaviour between...

Translating a bit of the idea behind domain driven design into code architecture

I've often participated in arguments discussions about whether thin models or thin controllers should be preferred. The wisdom of a thin controller is that if you need to test your controller in isolation then you need to stub the dependencies of your request and response. It also violates the single responsibility principal because the controller could have multiple reasons to change. Seemingly, the alternative is to settle on having fat models. This results in having domain logic right next to your persistence logic. If you ever want to change your persistence layer you're going to be in for a painful time. That's a bit of a cargo cult argument because honestly who does that, but it's also a violation of the single responsibility principal. One way to decouple your domain logic from both persistence and controller is to use the "repository pattern". Here we encapsulate domain logic into a data service. This layer deals exclusively with imple...

Adventures in IT

Search This Blog