So the boss asked me to build a web-service

[BigDaddy]

How about that? We want to be able to activate gift cards at a point of sale, then have it post info to us, have us make a database entry, and send back a confirmation.

I, of course, am pushing .NET--as I know it facilitates web svcs really well. Anyone have any ideas on how to do it differently? Or if .NET isn't our best solution? If it is, I've never done this type of thing other than in the classroom environment. Is this a major thing to do? We don't even have .NET now.

Any feedback is much appreciated...

[fractalvibes]

Sounds like a .NET web service is your ticket. There is a class avaliable in PHP called NUSoap, but it was difficult to work with.

fv

[raf]

What do you mean by

We want to be able to activate gift cards

What's the 'activation' part ?

[BigDaddy]

At the point of sale, they would swip a card, which would send a SOAP or XML message to us. I would then need to do a simple sql insert or update statement into our database and send a confirmation message back.

[raf]

I'm sorry, but it's not very clear to me. I don't see why you would need to set up a messenger architecture for such a simple task like this and it's also not clear to me how the client should then proces the returned message.
(Woun't be thin clients anyway to set up a bidirectional messenger) .

I don't see how we can give helpfull advice without any info on what would go on at the other side. How is the sale registered for instance ? Is this realy a server-server action ?
I mean, if it's in a web-environment, then basically, this is just the same operation as an unsubscribe link so you could do this with a simple hashed ID-value in a querystring. Since you only expect one sort of request (sales confirmation) and will just return a status of the scriptexecution.

[BigDaddy]

He originally posed the question of receiving an http post, or some sort of secure transaction to an api. I knew that a web service would do the job, but wasn't sure if it is the best route.

What's going to happen is that someone will sell the card, swipe it, and then we will receive some information--SOAP/XML, and we need to take it, and do an update/insert to activate it in our system. I am unclear myself how that message would be generated to us--but it wouldn't be as simple as them going to a web site to click on "Activate".

I don't know...is there a simpler way to do it?