[Info-vax] Restful API w/JSON client package or library on OpenVMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 3/20/2024 1:52 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2024-03-20 16:00:39 +0000, Dave Froble said:
>> On 3/20/2024 12:05 AM, Richard Jordan wrote:
>>> Thanks for the responses.  Got a little more info; where the current 
>>> GSoap implementation is done to the vendor software running on a 
>>> local server; the new one is cloud (O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!) 
>>> so the connection is done to a public server with no reasonable 
>>> option to set up a test account so we can create the software to talk 
>>> to it on VMS.
>>>
>>> I may find something that can run as a generic server on one of the 
>>> customer's pc servers so we can test doing 'generic' restful but 
>>> we'll see. More likely we'll end up with some middleware on a local 
>>> pc server talking to the vendor cloud, and relaying requests from VMS.
>>
>> Well, not sure how much you want to get into things.  But, if you're 
>> going to implement something, why put some PC in the middle of things. 
>> It's rather simple to do from VMS.
>>
>> At the bottom of whatever is used is, wait for it, a socket.  Simple 
>> socket communications.  Add SSL/TLS for encryption.
>>
>> I'm not looking at your requirements, but, I'd bet that HTTPS is used. 
>> After that, it's just what happens to the data.

> The source of annoyance for some reading here is that the available 
> native libraries are somewhere between unhelpful and ineffective, just 
> as soon as you need to interoperate with most anything else from the 
> past decade or two. Yeah, I can do all of this in VAX MACRO32 too, but 
> ~nobody willingly chooses that path.

> Python and some other choices are likely the furthest along for this 
> general REST task, but the "traditional" OpenVMS languages and OpenVMS 
> RTLs are pre-millennially-less-than-entirely-useful, at best. As Dave is 
> well aware, TLS support is trailing, too.

Side note: Java is also a relevant choice on VMS. Or more
accurate: JVM languages are also a relevant choice on VMS,
if one happens to like Groovy or Kotlin or Scala better than
Java (I suspect Groovy is most relevant for the task).

It is true that the traditional/native VMS languages
are not good at this.

But one should note that on Windows/Linux then the
majority of this type of stuff is not done in
native code either, but in Java/Groovy/Kotlin/Scala, Python,
PHP, C#/VB.NET etc..

It is not just that VMS RTL's does not come with
builtin HTTP(S) and JSON support, but just as much
that VMS applications are almost entirely in native code
while on other platforms the majority of business
applications are now in non-native code.

Arne