The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - an introduction to Service Component Architecture.

Today’s special guest is Graham Charters. Graham works at IBM’s development lab in Hursley, England. His past roles have included WebSphere Application Server development, and architecture responsibilities in WebSphere Business Integration, and Adapters. [...] Today Graham is going to talk to us today about the Service Component Architecture, or SCA.

Graham talks about what SCA is and includes a mention of the PECL package that enables PHP applications to work with multiple data sources seamlessly.

Download the show directly or subscribe to the feed to get this and other great PHP Abstract shows.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted the latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - an introduction to Service Component Architecture.

Today’s special guest is Graham Charters. Graham works at IBM’s development lab in Hursley, England. His past roles have included WebSphere Application Server development, and architecture responsibilities in WebSphere Business Integration, and Adapters. [...] Today Graham is going to talk to us today about the Service Component Architecture, or SCA.

Graham talks about what SCA is and includes a mention of the PECL package that enables PHP applications to work with multiple data sources seamlessly.

Download the show directly or subscribe to the feed to get this and other great PHP Abstract shows.

In his latest blog post, Adam Trachtenberg looks into the world of web services and comes out with three topics - SOAP, axis2, and SDO. He chooses to focus, though, on the last of these after working with it to really get a feel for what it can do.

n my role as eBay Platform Evangelist, I spend a lot of time exploring different XML technologies. SOAP is obviously the big one. No, it's not PEAR::SOAP or NuSOAP; it's axis2.

He talks a bit about what axis2 is and the need it fills in the web services world. He also talks about how it's been developed (not copied after SOAP, but more of a fresh start that happens to do the same things). After this quick look at axis2, though, he gets into the head of the post - SDO.

The other PHP XML extension I've been hearing a lot about is SDO. SDO is an attempt to provide a standard data interface regardless of the backend datasource. So, for example, you can interact with XML data in the exact same manner as information pulled from your database.

Adam decided to give it a try and see how it interacted with the eBay API with some simple code examples. The first of which looks through eBay Motors and finds the title and mileage for each of the items grabbed. It worked well, and didn't require too much more development than the SOAP predecesor, but there were a few quirks that made things a bit more difficult (like SDO's inability to completely consume a WSDL file and understand a SOAP service's functionality).

In his latest blog post, Adam Trachtenberg looks into the world of web services and comes out with three topics - SOAP, axis2, and SDO. He chooses to focus, though, on the last of these after working with it to really get a feel for what it can do.

n my role as eBay Platform Evangelist, I spend a lot of time exploring different XML technologies. SOAP is obviously the big one. No, it's not PEAR::SOAP or NuSOAP; it's axis2.

He talks a bit about what axis2 is and the need it fills in the web services world. He also talks about how it's been developed (not copied after SOAP, but more of a fresh start that happens to do the same things). After this quick look at axis2, though, he gets into the head of the post - SDO.

The other PHP XML extension I've been hearing a lot about is SDO. SDO is an attempt to provide a standard data interface regardless of the backend datasource. So, for example, you can interact with XML data in the exact same manner as information pulled from your database.

Adam decided to give it a try and see how it interacted with the eBay API with some simple code examples. The first of which looks through eBay Motors and finds the title and mileage for each of the items grabbed. It worked well, and didn't require too much more development than the SOAP predecesor, but there were a few quirks that made things a bit more difficult (like SDO's inability to completely consume a WSDL file and understand a SOAP service's functionality).

Graham Charters writes, in this new post on the IBM developerWorks PHP blog today, that the first release of their Service Component Architecture (v 0.1.0) has been released.

We've just made the first release of the Service Component Architecture (SCA) for PHP prototype available. SCA allows you to turn PHP classes into Web services by adding a few simple phpDocumentor-style annotations. SCA will automatically generate WSDL for these services when required.

SCA also uses the same annotations technique to allow PHP classes to declare dependencies on other Web services or PHP classes. At runtime it will then 'inject' proxies for these dependencies, which can then be used to call the Web services or classes

You can check out documentation for the project and some examples of how it works over on this page and a whitepaper here will give you the full scoop. If you're interested, be sure to check out the Google Group for the project too.

Graham Charters writes, in this new post on the IBM developerWorks PHP blog today, that the first release of their Service Component Architecture (v 0.1.0) has been released.

We've just made the first release of the Service Component Architecture (SCA) for PHP prototype available. SCA allows you to turn PHP classes into Web services by adding a few simple phpDocumentor-style annotations. SCA will automatically generate WSDL for these services when required.

SCA also uses the same annotations technique to allow PHP classes to declare dependencies on other Web services or PHP classes. At runtime it will then 'inject' proxies for these dependencies, which can then be used to call the Web services or classes

You can check out documentation for the project and some examples of how it works over on this page and a whitepaper here will give you the full scoop. If you're interested, be sure to check out the Google Group for the project too.

In his latest post, Wez Furlong responds to some of Jacob Santos' comments made earlier today about Service Data Objects (SDO).

I was just skimming over Santos' Post about SDO, and was saddened to see more anecdotes and less facts.

Specifically, he mentions two points - one dealing with the definition Jacob gave for the functionality and the other pointing out some better stats that Jscob didn't include in his comments.

In his latest post, Wez Furlong responds to some of Jacob Santos' comments made earlier today about Service Data Objects (SDO).

I was just skimming over Santos' Post about SDO, and was saddened to see more anecdotes and less facts.

Specifically, he mentions two points - one dealing with the definition Jacob gave for the functionality and the other pointing out some better stats that Jscob didn't include in his comments.

In his latest, Jacob Santos asks the question more and more people are wanting to know - why hasn't SDO really taken off?

Developers will eventually start using it, it will take some time to go from the PHP way to SDO way. It would be easier to jump into SDO once better, more easily interpreted and simple to understand tutorials, code samples, and support is available. IBM tutorials are a little bit technical, with words and complex pictures (UML). Just give me code and explain how it works and let me run with the SDO scissors in my hand.

He talks about the contributions that both Zend and IBM have made to the effort and the lack of features (well, the duplication of current PHP features - XML and database functionality). He has a positive outlook for the overall future of the project, stating that:

I'm quite sure that enough PHP developers are going to embrace SDO in the coming years depending on the coverage it gets that IBM and Zend's investment will pay off in the end.

In his latest, Jacob Santos asks the question more and more people are wanting to know - why hasn't SDO really taken off?

Developers will eventually start using it, it will take some time to go from the PHP way to SDO way. It would be easier to jump into SDO once better, more easily interpreted and simple to understand tutorials, code samples, and support is available. IBM tutorials are a little bit technical, with words and complex pictures (UML). Just give me code and explain how it works and let me run with the SDO scissors in my hand.

He talks about the contributions that both Zend and IBM have made to the effort and the lack of features (well, the duplication of current PHP features - XML and database functionality). He has a positive outlook for the overall future of the project, stating that:

I'm quite sure that enough PHP developers are going to embrace SDO in the coming years depending on the coverage it gets that IBM and Zend's investment will pay off in the end.