Asta SOAP Explorer built with the ASTA native XML Parser is available. It shows a treeview that allows for SOAP Services to be connected to and examples services executed. Asta SOAP Amazon Client Example an ASTA SOAP Client that allows you to look up books from an Amazon.com SOAP Service by author. Preliminary Asta SOAP Documentation

ASTA SOAP Components

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ASTA SOAP support includes NO Runtime or server fees and does not require ASTA 3 or AstaIO.

ASTA 3 and AstaIO users will get SOAP technology as part of their existing licenses.

ASTA SOAP components can be used to create SOAP Servers as

a. As an ISAPI DLL

b. As a Linux DSO

c. as a stand alone HTTP server under Windows or Linux using the AstaIO cross platform Native Sockets.

ASTA SOAP clients can use WinINET (SSL Support, gets through any proxy that IE can) or AstaIO Cross Platform Native Sockets.

ASTA 3 and AstaIO Server Side Soap Integration

TAstaSoapMethods allow for developers to define soap Methods that can be used directly in Isapi DLL's, or Apache DSO's with Kylix.

Additionally SOAP methods can be defined in ASTA Servers.

ASTA Server ServerMethods have a boolean property of SoapService: Boolean. If this is true, then that servermethod can be published as a SOAP Service.

ASTA HTTP Server, AstaISAPI, AstaDSO

ASTA Soap Servers can be run as a Standalone SOAP Server or as an ISAPI DLL or Apache DSO. When runnging standalone, That soap server, which uses the AstaIO Native Cross platform sockets (available in ASTA 3 also), can publish SOAP services coded directly from the ASTA HTTP Server or through ASTA Servers.

When the AstaHTTPSoapServer is started up, a list of available ASTA Servers is made available and the SOAP Server queries the ASTA Servers for avaialable Servermethods tagged as being available to be published as a SOAP Service.

The SoapServer then publishes a WSDL file that contains the sum of all of the ServerMethods coded directly from the SOAP Server and from ASTA Servers.

Thus soap services can be made available with no knowledge of XML. when using ASTA Servers, all threading and database connection pooling is handled by the ASTA servers so that this solution is extremely scalable. Load Balancing and Fail Over optios are available also.

The AstaSkyWire line will include the ability for scripted ASTA server methods to be defined via VBScript. Once defined, those methods will flow through the normal ASTA SOAP architecture. Thus SOAP Services can be defined at runtime without re-starting ASTA Servers or SOAP Servers.

There will also be an ASTA COM Proxy server that can read COM Methods and publish those methods as SOAP Servers.

Client Side

The whole point of SOAP services is that any client application can call any SOAP Service regardless of operating system or development tool used. So of course ASTA Soap Services can be called by any SOAP Client.

ASTA 3 and AstaIO also provide a native XML parser written in Pascal. This XML parser is used with the TAstaSOAPClient to provide SOAP Clients under Delphi and kylix.

The XML Parser has been translated to portable C++ and will be available on Palm, Wince, and Linux allowing Pda clients to call SOAP Services Directly.

Additionally, ASTA clients will be able to call SkyWire servers that can act as a SOAP Proxy. This means that Palm or WinCE clients can access SOAP services without the need for an XML parser but through normal ASTA messaging calls.