Most web service developers rely on a data binding conversion layer within a web service to work directly with data structures in their programming language of choice - but this causes a number of problems. In the first of a series of articles that look at these problems, Dennis Sosnoski starts at the most basic level, looking at simple data types and the issues that arise from mapping them.
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InfoQ's Stefan Tilkov questioned lead developers of Apache Axis2, Apache CXF, Spring Web Services, JBossWS and and Sun’s Metro about their design goals, their approach towards Java and Web services standards, data binding, accessing XML, interoperability, REST support, and framework maturity. The results revealed many similarities and some noteworthy differences.
In Visual Basic 9.0, XML becomes a built-in data type with a rich editing experience that completely eliminates the conceptual barrier between the code that you write and the XML that you're trying to express. It will cover tips, tricks, and gotchas so that developers reach peak performance when programming against XML with LINQ in Visual Basic 9.0.
LINQ to XSD is the long awaited follow-up to LINQ to XML. Its primary purpose is to produce LINQ-compatible object models from XSD files, giving developers some measure of static type checking while accessing XML data.
Microsoft's VB team is starting a series of articles on how to use XML Literals. Many of these articles will demonstrate how to replace XSLT code with VB by making direct comparisons between the two languages.
A new alpha version of the typesafe LINQ provider, LINQ to XSD, is available. This is the first version compatible with the RTM version of Visual Studio 2008.
CXF is a fully featured Open Source Web Services Framework which people claim is easy to use and is industrial strength. CXF is also embeddable and people have used it often in combination with Spring. CXF is the combination of the Celtix and XFire communities coming together at Apache.
The W3C published last month an update to its "Guide to Versioning XML Languages Using new XML Schema 1.1 features" which details the new features of XML Schema 1.1 in the context of schema versioning. They represent real advances for web service practitioners and should become part of your guidelines and best practices when the W3C releases XML Schema 1.1.
Transforming XML from one format to another is a common task for many developers. To do this, most of them leave the confines of their general purpose language and make calls to an XSLT library. But what if they didn't have to? With LINQ to XML, it now becomes much easier to manipulate XML using C# and VB. Eric White describes how one can perform XSLT style transformations using C# 3.0.
