Passing large documents via web services
 

Suppose I am developing a web service with the following features:
- doc/literal
- has an operation whose input message has a part whose type is
defined by a schema
- The documents that is will be receiving can be quite large
I want to develop this service in a top down fashion - i.e. starting
with the wsdl.
I don't want to use generated java classes based on the schema due to
the size of the documents. If I use a java object generated from the
schema, the entire document will have to be pulled into memory,
killing performance.
What are my options?

Re: Passing large documents via web services
 

jro wrote:
> Suppose I am developing a web service with the following features:
> - doc/literal
> - has an operation whose input message has a part whose type is
> defined by a schema
> - The documents that is will be receiving can be quite large
> I want to develop this service in a top down fashion - i.e. starting
> with the wsdl.
> I don't want to use generated java classes based on the schema due to
> the size of the documents. If I use a java object generated from the
> schema, the entire document will have to be pulled into memory,
> killing performance.
> What are my options?
>

This is a tough one, because web services are message-based, which means
the whole thing is sent at once. You probably want something
stream-based, which will allow you to process the docs a piece at a time.

You might have the web service return a URL that points at the doc,
instead of the doc itself. Then the receiving process can use the URL to
pull the doc across at its leisure.

Re: Passing large documents via web services
 

jro wrote:
> Suppose I am developing a web service with the following features:
> - doc/literal
> - has an operation whose input message has a part whose type is
> defined by a schema
> - The documents that is will be receiving can be quite large
> I want to develop this service in a top down fashion - i.e. starting
> with the wsdl.
> I don't want to use generated java classes based on the schema due to
> the size of the documents. If I use a java object generated from the
> schema, the entire document will have to be pulled into memory,
> killing performance.
> What are my options?

Web Services is really a type of API it is not a file
transfer protocol.

If you want to make a call it is a standard requirement to
have the argument in memory.

If you really want to move a file use a protocol designed
for that: FTP, plain HTTP etc..

Arne