Brain

DotBoost Technologies specializes in providing web solutions to IT problems. Our team develops unique applications, called Tools, that can meet any kind of IT business requirement. And because we offer services for the complete project life cycle, from concept development, architecture, design, development and integration, to implementation and support, there's a DotBoost Tool available for every need.

Challenge

Our goal was to build a dedicated interface for Tools to communicate with each other, quickly and efficiently. What we needed to create was a purpose-built, streamlined, secure, web service - thus the concept for the ingenious Tool, the Brain, was devised.

This web service had to operate as an intermediary between different tools of varying functions and capabilities, facilitating the overall operations. Specifically, one Tool needed to be able to clearly communicate with multiple Tools as its output data could serve as the input data for one or several Tools.

This made the problem particularly challenging, as it's possible that each Tool could be written in a different programming language such as PHP, PEAR, ASP, JAVA, etc.

Solution

First, to facilitate communication between applications written in different programming languages we decided to utilize SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) as the standard "talking" protocol.

The Zend Framework was chosen to build the Brain as the most effective way to work with a collection of classes. Since the Zend Framework does not require employing its entire software infrastructure, it is possible to use only the necessary classes.

Of these, Zend_Soap for communication, Zend_Validate for data verification, and Zend_Soap_Server were the classes selected. Zend_Soap_Server is a particularly simple and powerful class for implementing a Web Service. Of this class, only the Zend_Soap_Autodiscovery method, part of the Zend_Soap_Server general WSDL file, was needed.

Implementation

The main structure of the Brain resulted from the joining of these powerful SOAP classes and methods. Each Tool now had its own WSDL file describing the SOAP methods that it could use to communicate.

Result

The Brain is now the intellect of the DotBoost web server, making it a place where various Tools can talk to each other, quickly querying and relaying information.

For example, a Tool requiring data will send a query to the Brain. The Brain will store this request and send it to the Tool containing the information, waiting for it to respond. Once the Brain receives the response it relays this information back to the original Tool. The entire process takes place in a matter of seconds. Communication between Tools is now organized, efficient, and quick.

Now when another Tool is developed and added to the DotBoost offerings, we simply write a few simple SOAP communication methods and it is fully functional and ready to "plug-in" to the Brain.