It is difficult to manually read a WSDL description of a SOAP web service and figure out which parts you need for your programming language and SOAP library of choice.
I was looking for something to take the URL of a WSDL description and produce human readable output that simply says this is the URL for the service, the namespace (if any) that needs to be used, the soap action (if any) that needs to be used, and the list of methods and their arguments. Obviously, this is the WSDL in a different form, but the problem with WSDL is that trying to read WSDL files by hand and actually understanding what the service expects as input is a pain.
Simon Fell sent me email with a link to WSDL display tool on GotDotNet. Unfortunately, the script has been down most of the time since I started trying to reach it, it is slow to time out on WSDL that it can't interpret, and so far I haven't had much luck getting it to work with WSDL that wasn't generated from .NET.
Then after a bit of searching I found a WSDL verifier, again on GotDotNet. This page gives a clue as to why most of the WSDL I tried to get info on probably failed. For example, try this verification request for the delayed stock quote service on xmethods.net. I've been using this service and others without problems, but the MS .NET tool doesn't like them. So much for interop.
[Tony Hong sent me a note that the above WSDL file for the delayed stock quote service is no longer valid and should be:
http://services.xmethods.net/soap/urn:xmethods-delayed-quotes.wsdl
If you try the URL above with the WSDL verifier you'll get a valid result.]
My enthusiam for SOAP and WSDL is greatly diminished. Unless you want to use a single vendor, it looks like we don't really have interop yet, the tools need to improve, and quite frankly, using SOAP and WSDL feels like work. This stuff is not ready for prime-time. I would appreciate links to other online validators or WSDL interpreters that do work.
The helpful emails I received today give me hope that things will get easier.
Mike Stone recommends the Generic SOAP Client that "not only parses the WSDL file, but also generates forms for you to access the defined web service directly."
10:24:30 AM 
|
