[MOBY-l] service = method ?

[Martin Senger]

> 
> $x = $y->operation1->operation2->operation3
> 
> but this is just a pipeline of 3 atomic operations that could equally 
> well be broken into three separate calls.  
>
   Could they really? Only if the operations return a handler to an object
which must be used in the next operation call. Which means that the
operations are *not* independent - but at the moment they are still 
registered as individual services.

>
> I think we can find a happy compromise between completely restructuring 
> MOBY Central to allow registration of complex operations, and supporting 
> the type of interaction which I believe you are talking about 
> (...actually, if you could send a specific example of what it is you 
> want to do we would be able to talk in less abstract terms...)
>
   Here is my specific example (more details about this wervice can be 
found at http://industry.ebi.ac.uk/soaplab):
   I want to call an analysis tool (such as blast, or EMBOSS's seqret) 
with my sequence as input. But I know that the job can be long. So I want 
to use two operations (this is a simplified example):
   a) startJob (analysisName, mySequence) returning a jobHandker object, 
and later:
   b) getResult (jobHandler) returning a result object.

   Using such two-methods web service now I would need to register it by 
Moby Central as two separated services:

   service "startJob", and 
   service "getResults".

Which is doable but perhaps they may be other ways how to register the
same service once - but with two methods. For example, Moby central may
keep the current registration scenario for the services with one method,
but allow also a registration of a service by providing its WSDL - which
"magically" allows to have more methods in one service. But this was just
an example (and Mark showed another possible solution for that: "generates
a combined WSDL for every service downstream of a given node"), the more
pressing question is if we want the Moby Central to allow such
"state-fullness" services at all.

>
> $x = $y->operation1->operation2->operation3
>
> but this is just a pipeline of 3 atomic operations that could equally
> well be broken into three separate calls.
>
   Could they really? Only if the operations return a handler to an object
which must be used in the next operation call. Which means that the
operations are *not* independent - but at the moment they are still
registered as individual services.
   But this is just another example already commented on earlier.

   Regards,
   Martin

-- 
Martin Senger

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