The Good News: our team has a Service up and running! The Bad News: we couldn't get our SAPXI service implemented. Obviously SAPXI is a very powerful tool, but frankly I wouldn't touch it again without takinf a course that is dedicated to learning the tool.
That being said, I can now relax at least a little. We can continue to test our service now, and begin to implement the client application. After all this the client app will be a complete breeze!!!
I found the rpml exercise to be very interesting, and relatively easy to accomplish. It really does demonstrate the utility of xml. It seems that xml can be used for almost anything a developer could concieve. I was looking at Microsofts new Windows Presentation Format (WPF) which is an xml based "language" for building forms for both web and pc applications. Very interesting.