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I have written previously on a project I was undertaking using a C# client calling a PHP-based XML-RPC webservice. Well, the project is near to completion. It should have been finished, but there were several delays from the client’s side - most notable of which was, they refused to even take a look at the software until it was 100% bug-free: they wouldn’t even test it! What a lot of people don’t realize is that the client plays a huge part in the design process. Simply saying, “go and design a Car rental management Software for me” without taking a look back, and then asking “why is it not ready yet?” without even looking at the software in development is a serious morale killer.

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When I chose XML-RPC as my method of serialization, it was because I was learning XML and I needed something to sink my newly acquired fangs into. After attempting to serialize arrays of many-membered objects in tandem, I quickly realised how much overhead the xml tags add to the transport. I found myself almost wishing there was something lighter AND easier. Although JSON produces less data and is easy to use, it is still a bit of a problem for me because I transfer typed data, and support for clients other than web browsers is kind of shaky.

I had always known that the apache web server (God bless their souls) has built-in content compression capabilities, it wont work unless the client reports that it can deal with it - which was just what XML-RPC.NET could not do. Charles Cook has promised gzip http compression support in the next release of his wonderful component but it’s been almost a year now, and nothing’s showing up. So it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty.

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I have to develop a client-server application, the connection bandwidth is not very high, the database is MySQL on a Linux server, and I have to use C# for the windows client. I can’t use ADO.NET for obvious reasons, and the MySQL ODBC Connector cannot be relied on for such a congested link. How do I do it? Thank God for XML and Web Services. After struggling with different models for days without success, the idea of using XML-RPC hit me when I saw the w.Bloggar application at work.

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I have been using the wxWidgets Cross-platform library for my C++ projects for about 3 years now, and I must say it rocks. A stable version 2.8.0 of the library has just been released, which deprecates some of the classes and functions in 2.6 so I had to upgrade. I had some problems initially with setting up my development environment to use the library, because it is distributed as source and thus it is the user’s responsibility to compile it. The authors supply a variety of makefiles for different compilers, but some work without hassles and the others you have to tweak.

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