MacResearch

It's such a shame, with Cocoa we now have perhaps the best web interaction possibilities on any platform with the webkit framework, we have great XML parsing technology, and we can create by far the sexiest applications on any platform. Still, the moment I use the Ruby framework soap4r, I jealously wonder why don't we have something like this?!

And it's not only Ruby, looking at other languages like Java, Python, Perl etc it seems to me that SOAP support in the Cocoa frameworks is appalling, in fact there is no direct support. Sure, there is the CoreWebservices framework, but that's core foundation and requires some pretty cryptic coding at times. But even worse, documentation and examples are sparse and to get it working properly is everything but straightforward. Where is the Cocoa framework we are all waiting for that wraps all this low-level stuff and makes SOAP finally fun to work with?

It seems Apple is not interested in SOAP, some argue SOAP is dead anyway. REST is the way to go. This might be true elsewhere but not in biology, in fact, here at the EBI they are rolling out one after the other new SOAP service, and the same is true for many other sciences. It demonstrates that not only REST but also SOAP webservices will only become more important in the future. And I could do so many cool things with them if it were only a bit more easy to use.

There's one guy who is my "CocoaSOAP hero", that's Todd Ditchendorf. Todd has created a pretty cool general SOAP client (besides even more cool XML tools), and also released the few examples that are around. Secretly I hope Todd will create a soap4Cocoa framework one day, with Apple not interested I guess a 3rd party or open source inititative is the only thing we can hope for.

Or am I wrong and did I miss something? I sure hope so. Let me know what you think!