I've been so wrapped up in XI this last week that I can't seem to think about anything else.  I spent the better part of my weekend reworking all of the labs from the semester.  I think I've made a bit of a leap here as well.  I was looking over the graduate students implementations of the XI services they built and that helped tremendously.

While I am really starting to understand the concepts of XI, I think I have a long way to go.  Again I got stuck during lab 4.  This program is so complex - I'm not sure where any of my errors are coming from.  There are so many elements in the implementation that it's difficult to even keep track of them.

Well, that all being said I will continue to plug away, and hopefully we'll come up with a working service in the end.

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. 

Wow, I know it's been since St. Patrick's Day that I've posted anything, but I figure now is as good a time as any.  Perhaps because I'm being frustrated by a number of things.  Maybe it will feel good to rant for a while.

Everything with the project was going well until we tried to get the SAP XI interface hooked up.  I think I'm just lost on SAPXI.  I find the naming conventions to be cryptic, and the steps to set up interface are very complex.  At least to me!  I have not even been able to finish lab four, because -- well, I don't know the because.

Our team was finally able to produce a wsdl file and so I plugged that into our web service and I can't even tell what I'm looking at.  The C# code I wrote to hook up the other services to our service only took me an hour or so, but I don't even know where to begin with the SAPXI RFC's.  Maybe that's the problem.  I was never even able to see any exposed functions.  Oh well I keep plugging.  I've been so buried lately with work school and family (honestly my wife and kids haven't gotten much from me lately) that I have not been able to spend the time necassary to figure it all out.

Well that's all and I do feel better, because I think I now know what I need to do to accomplish this project.

Next entry is going to be about the undergraduate advising system @$#%$*&*#%^&$#!!!!!

Not a great week.  I've got too much to do and not enough time.  Actually my internship was a bit of a snooze this week as well.  I spent the better part of two days just reading C# code.  In the end it was a useful thing to do, but boring!

It seems one of the programmers had updated a piece of the program and it messed up one of the tables so that a lot of users could not log in.  I think an intern is not a very useful accessory in such a situation.  Oh, well, it seems that one can never get away from moments of crisis.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/aa480028.aspx

This is an interesting article that discusses the possible disconect between developers of Web Services and users of WS.  It outlines the different goals and needs of each and some possible solutions.

I seem to be having a difficult time keeping up with the blog.  Actually this is not the only class in which it is necassary to participate in a blog or discussion.  I'm not doing very well with those either. 

I started an internship at a company called Zywave this week, and I really think that it is going to help bring a real world view of exactly what we've been studying.  To me that's a great thing since I sometimes get frustrated by thinking that the academic environment and the business environment are worlds apart.  In any event, Zywave provides product management tools, client management tools, and research to the insurance industry.  All of there applications are delivered via the web, and they recently began converting there developement model to a web services architecture.  I think that the discussion in class provided a good base for me to build my experience upon.

Also I was able this week to complete the XML exercise.  I can see that XML is a great way to organize data for processing and display, however I've never seen how to utilize it in an actual application.  I am looking forward to that.

Hi.  I'm actually very excited to be in this class this semester.  (Although I think I may have screwed myself with a very heavy load this semester!)  This seems like a subject that will be very useful in the 'real world' which I some day hope to be invited to join.