Hi, thank u for this interesting discussion. SQL Relay seems to be an interesting tool. It offers a variety of features often missed in PHP. Especially the connection pooling technique promises an performance advantage, cause it reduces the typical overhead of database-auth on every script run. I´m just implementing a kind of application server with PHP. There is a PHP-clientscript residing on apache webserver that does RPCs to a server-deamon (written in PHP with PEARs Net_Server) and then generates HTML-output. The server handles business-logic, persistence of objects and does some caching. Like u Paul, i have now the same Problem: Using XML-RPC or SOAP. Look at http://weblog.masukomi.org/writings/xml-rpc_vs_soap.htm . there is a simple guide comparing both. I will first make use of XML-RPC. It´s quite simply and has a short learning curve. If i need more flexibility later then i will use SOAP and update my server/client-classes. greets Jan "Paul Miller" <pmiller@system-wise.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag IOEMKBGHKENDMKOBIGKCAEKECBAA.pmiller@system-wise.com">news:IOEMKBGHKENDMKOBIGKCAEKECBAA.pmiller@system-wise.com... > All, > > I originally sent this to the DB list, but I want to hear anyone's opinion > here. > > I am considering moving to a true 3-tier structure where the web server > does not have direct access to the database server - many times a government > requirement. I want to keep the PHP front end and use an application server > (middle tier) to handle all the DB calls and sessions. I could use Java or > something for the middle layer, but I do not really want to. I would like > to implement a PHP application server sitting on top of SQL Relay for > pooling and DB abstraction to reduce the need to have more expertise > necessary for implementation. Interoperability is important, but not 100% > necessary. > > With all that being said, what do you think is the best method of > communication between PHP and the application server. Just to throw it out > there, I have thought about SOAP and XML-RPC. I like SOAP better because it > can decrease payload a great deal by not having to use the whole struct > method and it is more complex. But the XML-RPC functions are written in C > and the SOAP are in PHP. PHP 5 has better object orientation and new XML > libs so the SOAP functions should run much faster, but still not native. > > What are your thoughts? > > - Paul -- PHP Soap Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php