Tony Bibbs takes a look at an increasingly popular bit of functionality in PHP5, the SOAP extension, and notes that it still has a "ways to go".

In my latest round of web services work in PHP5 I was creating a PHP5 client that interacts with our Java-based ERP. The client needs to be a combination of a couple of WSDL's into one, nice, compact and powerful client. It should be noted this client will be distributed via the State of Iowa PEAR channel so it will undoubted by used by other project in our organization and throughout state government so the result needs to have a lot more fit-and-finish than would be typical.

He mentions his expectations for PHP's usage of the protocol, including the automatic generation of variables/methods/etc to help the developer use the remote application easier.