RfC: Apache XML-RPC 3

[Jochen Wiedmann <jo...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

about two months ago, I posted a proposal for the next version of Apache 
XML-RPC, the so-called streaming branch.

So far I received few responses from XML-RPC users, all of which have 
been positive and encouraging. Unfortunately, there has been absolutely 
no echo from XML-RPC developers.

I do not know the reasons for the lack of interest. Despite the missing 
responses, I would now like to propose that the streaming branch be made 
Apache XML-RPC 3. In other words, replace the current trunk with the 
streaming branch.

Note, that I do not propose to abandon maintenance of version 2. This 
version can very well on its own branch and receive further development, 
possibly even new releases like 2.1, and so on.

To recall the streaming branch features:

- Uses a standard JAXP 1.1 compliant SAX 2 parser (typically the one,
    that comes with your JRE).
- Assumes Java 1.2. In other words, it supports collections. Basically,
   collections and arrays are synonyms.
- Several so-called vendor extensions. Vendor extensions are clearly
    separated from the default mode, which is still compliant to the
    XML-RPC specification. For example, to enable request compression,
    you have to enable the properties "enabledForExtensions" (activate
    vendor extensions in general) and "gzipCompressing".

Available vendor extensions include:

- Streaming mode (doesn't set the content-length header); the
   streaming mode has an extremely low memory profile. This includes
   a streaming base64 encoder.
- Request and response compression (this features have always been
   available in version2, but haven't been clearly expressed as
   vendor extensions).
- Additional data types: Null, long, float, byte, short, DOM
   fragments, java.io.Serializable, JAXB objects

The streaming branches web site is available from

      http://people.apache.org/~jochen/xmlrpc/site


Jochen