OT: Java XML-RPC

[Bryan Sant]

On 4/13/06, Stephen Ward <sjward at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am working on putting together both an XML-RPC client and server in
> Java, but Apache's latest official binary release (3.0a1) has a couple
> of bugs that are seriously aggravating:
>
> 1. It can't pass/return an array of arrays, and
> 2. It can't parse "string" with a lowercase 's'?!?.
>
> A bit of Googling has informed me that those problems are fixed in the
> latest dev build.  I have downloaded the xmlrpc-3.0b1 binaries but
> haven't given them a whirl yet.  If they work, I will probably be
> satisfied (until I run into some other undiscovered bug).
>
> I am curious to see if anyone knows when Apache is thinking of
> "officially" releasing fixes to these bugs.

I've messed around with Apache's XML-RPC lib, but I ran into issues
too.  To sum up the problem, read the first item on this FAQ --
http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/faq.html

Apache's XML-RPC lib is *alpha* software, and has been for YEARS.  I
watched this project for some time, and it appears there hasn't been
any significant progress for the last 800 centuries.  This is a shame
because I think that XML-RPC is a better/simpler approach compared to
SOAP for basic RPC needs.  Oh well.

If you don't mind running your server in a web container (tomcat),
then I would highly recommend moving to AXIS.  Apache's AXIS (SOAP
implementation) is great and JAX-RPC is little more than XML-RPC using
SOAP envelopes, so you'll be using a much more stable and mature
API/protocol (at least for Java) and you'll enjoy low overhead similar
to XML-RPC.

http://ws.apache.org/axis/

If you still want to use XML-RPC (and avoid a web container
dependency), then use Burlap/Hessian.  Burlap is a very simple,
efficient, and mature XML-RPC implementation in Java (there are
implementations in C++, C#, Python, PHP and other as well).  Hessian,
is a companion protocol to Burlap and uses a more efficient binary
transport instead of XML.

Read more here:
http://www.devx.com/Java/Article/27300

-Bryan