Suresh Kumar wrote:
Hi,
We were looking at alternatives to WSDL and came across Etch and SSDL.
Our initial feeling is that Etch looks interesting as an alternative to
WSDL. However, I have few questions (basic).
1. What is the wire format that Etch describes? e.g: WSDL is used to
describe SOAP messages though it can be used for other formats as well.
etch is used to define a service and generate api code supporting it.
at runtime any compatible transport may be selected (if defined). the
etch runtime includes a compact and fast binary transport. other
transports may be defined, such as soap, jms, xml, etc.
there is a document which describes the etch binary tagged data wire
format, if you really want to see i can send it along. i've not posted
it yet because it is still word format.
2. Can Etch be used to describe SOAP?
certainly. there are two approaches. the "compiler" or "binding"
approach would generate a wsdl from etch source and then use web
services tool chains to realize the service. arguably useful but not
recommended.
the preferred approach is to define a soap transport such that any
existing etch service implementation could use it instead of (or
along with) the builtin binary transport.
3. Can Etch be used in isolation i.e without CUAE? If yes, is there
any example?
etch is in no way dependent upon cuae.
there are four examples included in the etch sources, and one included
in the binary distribution. it is easy to get started, etch works easily
with eclipse (anywhere) or intellij (anywhere) or visual studio 2005
(windows).
scott out
Cisco Unified Application Environment Developer Forums 
