2008.06.09 - Lesson For The Day

[Peter Smith]

Today's Lesson: If you don't use interfaces, you will go to jail. Discuss.

Why it was taught: The 'interface' concept, on the surface and from research, seems to have been designed for a team software development environment where some of the Team Members are not subscribers to the Wiccan Programming Rede (Ten words the WPR fulfil; An it harm none prior code, change what ye will). Of course, there MUST be more to it, or y'all would be razzing it, so I've been poking at the concept with my new OCD lead. And this was the result of the lesson today. :)

(LFTD is my new feature; I've started working on a 'real' Enterprise app in .NET, and so there are new and wonderful things that I'm being exposed to. Some of them are being questioned, leading to lessons. After a while, I'll get around to explaining why the lesson was taught. These lessons will not necessarily be daily. YMMV)

-- Peter Smith

[Andrew Badera]

I just wrote an interface.

SOA is all about interfaces.

I'll probably write another interface or three in the next couple hours, minimum.

--
--
--Andy Badera
http://higherefficiency.net
http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/
http://andrew.badera.us/
http://changeroundup.com/
and...@badera.us
(518) 641-1280
Google me: http://www.google.com/search?q=andrew+badera

[CK]

Indeed. Interfaces == good.

What is the correct terminology for having a standard webservice WSDL
and calling differing services sharing that WSDL through differing
URLS? We use this a lot where I am and I'd like to put a fancy name
to it. I was thinking interface (as opposed to Interface) but if
there's a better name (particularly with more distinction) it would be
better.

Cheers

> --Andy Baderahttp://higherefficiency.nethttp://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/http://andrew.badera.us/http://changeroundup.com/

[Andrew Badera]

so you have one WSDL file that applies to multiple services? all the same operations, requests and responses and all that jazz? so it's all the same service, just with different _endpoints_? or is the backend actually different code?

--
--
--Andy Badera
http://higherefficiency.net
http://flipbitsnotburgers.blogspot.com/
http://andrew.badera.us/

[CK]

Its different code in each service. This is how we use it:

* User chooses an entity from a DDL
* User chooses a file to upload
* Application retrieves correct URL for that entity and calls the
webservice on that URL, knowing that it conforms to the standard WSDL
* Webservice converts the file correctly for that entity and does lots
of funky DB stuff etc

This means we can add new entities and services by deploying the new
service and adding the row for the entity / url to the database
without changing the core application.

This is an architecture I have inherited and continued to build upon
as I haven't been able to rewrite it any different way, however it
does the job currently.