XML Interface for Network Services is an open-source technology for definition and implementation of internet applications, which enforces a specification-oriented approach.
Specification-oriented approach
The specification-oriented approach is at the heart of XINS:
A tool for generating human-readable documentation, from the specifications.
A tool for generating WSDL, from the specifications.
A Log4J-based technology for logging, offering a specification format, internationalization of log messages, generation of HTML documentation and generation of code.
A Java library for calling XINS functions, the XINS/Java Client Framework; in xins-client.jar.
A server-side container for Java-based XINS API implementations, the XINS/Java Server Framework; in xins-server.jar. This is like a servlet container for XINS APIs.
A Java library with some common functionality, used by both the XINS/Java Client Framework and the XINS/Java Server Framework: the XINS/Java Common Library, in xins-common.jar.
An introductory tutorial called the takes the reader by the hand with easy-to-follow steps to perform, with screenshots. Since version 1.3.0, the XINS/Java Server Framework supports not only POX-style calls, but also SOAP and XML-RPC. And it supports conversion using XSLT. As of version 2.0, it also supports JSON and JSON-RPC. XINS is open-source and is distributed under the liberal BSD license.
Specifications
All XINS specification files are Plain Old XML. Compared to SOAP/WSDL/UDDI/etc. the format is extremely simple. There are specifications for projects, environment lists, APIs, functions, types and error codes. Below is an example of a XINS project definition.
Here is an example of a specification of an environment list:
An example of an API specification file: My first XINS API
An example of a function definition: Greets the indicated person.
The name of the person to be greeted.
RPC protocol
The XINS Standard Calling Convention is a simple HTTP-based RPC protocol. Input consists of HTTP parameters, while output is an XML document. This approach makes it compatible with plain Web browsers. Example of a request: http://somehost/someapi/?_convention=_xins-std&_function=SayHello&firstName=John&lastName=Doe Example of a successful response: Hello John Doe!
Competition
There are no known products that provide an integrated approach to specification-oriented development, similar to XINS. However, there are several frameworks and libraries that provide functionality similar to individual parts of XINS, including:
