XML-RPC for Geeks
Sunday, July 19, 1998 by Dave Winer.
Remember XML-RPC for Newbies? That was one of the most popular pieces ever. It put together the technology of XML-RPC, for users and investors, not for OS and scripting system developers.
In that piece I promised to write XML-RPC for Geeks, a specification of the XML-RPC protocol implemented in Frontier 5.1 for Windows and Mac. It's ready now. I'm not going to run the text of the spec thru the DaveNet mail list; probably only one in a hundred readers would have a clue what it means.
XML-RPC for Geeks 
But, if you're in the one percent of DaveNet readers who write web client and server software, on any operating system, please check it out and pass it on.
http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/xml/code/rpc.html
It's a very simple protocol. It's similar to CORBA, but lightweight, easy to implement, and builds on standards of the net, XML and HTTP.
Sports Illustrated
XML-RPC is new technology, but it's already having commercial impact. This morning, Sports Illustrated opened a ground-breaking photography website for the Goodwill Games. The application is running on three NT 4.0 machines, connected with XML-RPC over a LAN.
It's processing and serving photographs of events at the Goodwill Games. Yesterday's photos from the opening ceremonies include Natalie Cole, Ray Charles, Al Gore, Ted Turner and Hootie and the Blowfish. These are real photos taken by real journalists.
The site connects the photographers with their editors, and in an unprecedented way, connects with editors of other magazines, and normal everyday web surfers.
We're working with the Sports Illustrated people on a technical writeup of the system. That'll be the next piece in this series, called XML-RPC for Photojournalists.
Onward!
Dave Winer
PS: Lots of links today on the Scripting News home page.