Archives for March 2006

Yesterday, I wrote a “woe is me” post because I was having trouble invoking StrikeIron’s Reverse Phone Lookup from a PHP SOAP client. Here’s my problem
statement:

The challenge, at least for me, is the service requires a SOAP header for id/password. I was following the code sample and getting nowhere. Then, it (finally) occurred to me to run the code sample. Well, it doesn’t work either!

So, if anyone out there knows the secret to making this work – getting the service to recognize I actually have passed in a phone number — please let me know!

Well, it seems these four words: “at least for me”, were the key. On the reverse phone lookup, I was passing the phone number in an array, but come to find out; I needed an array for my array. On the code sample (batch send of SMS messages), I was short some PEAR Packages for XML Serialization.

So, that’s all good. I will definitely be able to leverage the StrikeIron Web Services in my “bus ride” work. But the cool thing – and therefore the post title – is how my (operator imposed) problems were resolved.

This morning, I received an email from a Senior Developer at StrikeIron, stating someone there saw my post, and they wanted to help me! How great is that? Two emails later, I was all set. Not only did StrikeIron create a new code
sample specific to Reverse Phone, they also debugged my code – thus the array in an array, and sent me all the PEAR download links.

Never once were my coding skills called out – other than by me! It’s been awhile since I coded for a living…

Not only does this experience show StrikeIron’s great customer (or in my case trial user) experience, but also how smart they are in monitoring the blogosphere.

Over the summer I wrote a Blogosphere Primer for PSGroup, and in the opening I wrote this:

“At a minimum, we advise our clients to find and listen to the blogosphere conversations about their companies, and their competitors.”

I think this is huge. If you aren’t listening for your own company (or person), get started. You can listen using simple query mechanisms (Technorati WatchLists, keyword and URL searches and feeds), or through sophisticated marketing intelligence services such as Umbria. [The Umbria execs briefed me back in December – impressive offering and vision.]

Lastly, and most importantly, many thanks to Ben for his help!

I had big blogging plans today…I was going to start posting on my impending “enterprise service bus rides”, and for good measure, I was going to prepare a “What is Business-Driven Architecture” post.

Instead, I’ve been trying to invoke StrikeIron’s Reverse Phone Lookup from a PHP5.1.1 client. The challenge, at least for me, is the service requires a SOAP header for id/password. I was following the code sample and getting nowhere. Then,
it (finally) occurred to me to run the code sample. Well, it doesn’t work either!

So, if anyone out there knows the secret to making this work – getting the service to recognize I actually have passed in a phone number — please let me know! I can see you all typing, “use a Java Client, or a REST interface!”

How did I get down this path? I’m looking for existing assets to use in my enterprise service bus rides, and I find the StrikeIron story intriguing. As for why I thought to test with PHP, using PHP for SOAP services when you aren’t messing with the header can be this simple:

<?php

$client = new SoapClient(“http://services.xmethods.net/soap/urn:xmethods-delayed-quotes.wsdl”);

print ($client->getQuote(“qqqq”));

?>

Oh well, tomorrow’s another day…

update 03-14-2006 8:02PM – My head hurts so much I forgot to attribute the code sample, it came from here.