Bill, You are correct that MIDP devices would not be able to deserialize a Collection to a Collection. Of course, they cannot presently deserialize a Map to a Map. Users of Perl or Python or .NET face a similar situation.
This is an issue regardless of whether or not serialization of a Collection or a Map is "built in" with Apache SOAP. The real issue is that the only data types that authors of SOAP services should assume that every SOAP implementation can handle are the primitive data types defined by SOAP or XML Schema and nulls, and arrays thereof. Anyone creating a SOAP service must understand this and choose whether or not to use SOAP structs that a client may or may not support. Collections and Maps are specific cases of such structs. With Collections and Maps in particular, however, it should be easy for MIDP devices to provide support. The format of the structs created for these types is the same as for Vectors and Hashtables, respectively, so a MIDP device could deserialize them into those structures. It is just a matter of using whatever mechanism is available in the SOAP implementation in use to map the xsi:type used by Apache SOAP to the appropriate [de-]serializer. Scott Nichol ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill de hÓra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 4:47 AM Subject: RE: Confusing issue on Maps > -----Original Message----- > From: Scott Nichol [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Thanks for getting us back to the original topic. Are you > saying that you would like to have more of the Java data > structure interfaces and classes (e.g. Collection, Map, > subinterfaces and classes implementing them) registered with > [de-]serializers internally, so that you don't have to think > about them when you are coding, e.g. to remember to specify > Map.class rather than just using myMap.getClass()? That > seems pretty reasonable. I think that the absence of this is > mostly historical. Until recent releases, Apache SOAP > compiled and ran on JDK 1.1, so only Hashtable and Vector had > built-in [de-]serializers. (And I notice that it is > Hashtable, not Dictionary, so that Hashtable users did not > have to always specify Dictionary.class as the Java type.) I > will look at adding the other mappings. Scott, Does this raise any issues for folks that may want to send and receive SOAP via a device using the MIDP (which doesn't have Collections)? I'm thinking of situations where 1.2 level systems are sending Collection structures into MIDP devices, which I imagine won't be able to deserialize them. regards, Bill de hÓra .. Propylon www.propylon.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
