[xml-rpc] Apple on board, supports SOAP and XML-RPC in Mac OS X

[Steve Zellers]

Hi All,

In answer to Andrews question:

> Does the
> AppleScript implementation allow sending messages between Apple systems and
> non-Apple systems?

The xml stuff is built into the AppleEvent manager, which is what 
AppleScript uses to communicate between Applications and other machines.  
You can write AppleScript expressions that call specific methods at 
specific endpoints - but there is (as yet) no automatic terminology 
generated from WSDL.

Between two OS X machines (or OS 9 to OS X), we use a secure protocol that 
is, by default, not SOAP.  If you want to enable incoming soap requests, 
you need to wire your web server (we ship Apache on the system) to a filter 
that forwards the XML to the target application.  This is intended, 
initially, to be more of a client feature than a server feature.

Our SOAP and XML-RPC support in AppleEvents is a feature that kind of snuck 
into this release, and I'm sure we're going to find problems with it. I 
look forward to working with you all on the greatest interop possible (for 
both protocols!) and I espeically want to thank UserLand, in particular 
Jake Savin, for his review of the design proposals.

I'm not sure when more details will be available, I know that we're working 
hard on getting information to our developers, and I'll forward what I can 
to these lists.

Thanks,
--smz