I just finished reading the OpenSRS Protocol Message Format and the
XCP specs (the parts showing how to encode the requests in XML and
how to connect to server and so on) and I have a few comments.
It seems to me (I might be wrong) that the OpenSRS engineers have
spent a good deal of effort to create parallel versions of the
XML-RPC and SSL protocols.
The code is further complicated due to combining of the presentation
and application layers. For instance, the connection preamble (client
validation, encryption set-up) could have been done via an SSL module.
Using client certificates would alleviate the need for the reseller
"cookie" and secret passwords. All these details are irrelevant to the
function the server performs and should be left to a lower layer.
If known standards were used then a big obstacle for implementing the
client in other languages would be removed, because there is a high
chance that they have XML-RPC already, and if the (Open)SSL library
doesn't have a wrapper in that language yet, external programs can be
used as "filters" (pipes) to achieve the same job. Let alone there
would be less logic to implement in the client so it would be faster
to develop and easier to manage.
I would be very happy if a later major (minor? I don't want to push
it :) ) release would explore these options.
-- L.C. Network Admin @ InfoStreet
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