Hi everyone, 

I am currently working on a Workflow Management System based interface
to OpenTox. I had to write some BeanShell scripts to access the OpenTox
web services. In the end work progresses, but there are some points I
noticed which I think make it hard for (external) developers to
implement an interface to OpenTox. 

* Bad or non existing error messages. 
  In most cases, when I do a mistake and submit a wrong call to a
  service, the only reply I get is a more or less cryptic number (in
  most cases 500). Then I know in general that something went wrong,
  but I do not know if it's my fault, if so what exactly went wrong or
  if maybe the service itself has some implementation problems. 

* Reliable test cases
  Also, some reliable test cases would make things easier. Some fixed
  calls of the services with a given input and a given output so a
  developer can test her or his implementation. At the moment, I had
  to get some data, and generate some example calls from the more or
  less elaborated short examples on the web page. If something goes
  wrong I have to check my calls, my data and in the worst case the
  service might have problems with this data or the call and I will
  not get the solution to the problem. In the end, this is related to
  the problem with the error messages, as I do not know exactly what the
  problem is if something goes wrong. 

To summarize, it was easy for me to write something for the TUM
services, but just because I can access the server and check in the
logs what is send to the server and what exactly goes wrong. And of
corse we have some example calls to our services. But our services too
lack some example test case published somewhere and meaningful error
messages. Writing interfaces for other services was harder, as I
cannot really see what is going on. So I was stuck frequently with
some error which in the end was easy to solve but took me quite some
time to find.

I did not check all the services, but I did not find services which
gave me meaningful error messages or provide a complete test case. 

What do you think? Would it make sense to provide some test cases and
somehow implement some standards for the error messages?

Best regards,

Joerg 

-- 
Dipl.-Bioinf.  Joerg Wicker              phone: +49-89-289-19440
Technische Universitaet Muenchen           fax: +49-89-289-19414
Institut fuer Informatik/I12             email: joerg.wicker at in.tum.de
Boltzmannstr. 3                           room: MI 01.08.039
D-85748 Garching b. Muenchen, Germany
http://wwwkramer.in.tum.de/wicker/