August 2006 Archives

I went looking for the simple stock quote Web service and found only a handful. I found one that worked well on the xmethods.net Web site. I found the example in the Ruby Cookbook (page 630). I'm not sure if it was due to my posting my Ruby based Web service client on Tuesday, and it causing some sort of spike in usage, but since yesterday this service no longer exists! It's not even listed anymore. So those of you that were thinking "this Ruby program doesn't work!" are right! It no longer works. I will be fixing that.

When you do find a Web service using the Google approach to finding them, they might be dated 2003, or something like that. Which is fine - if a service written in 2003 worked and still works fine then there is no need to change it. However as a user you'd still like to know that it is current and won't be gone in like ... a DAY!

So then I found a WSDL for a simple Stock quote Web service on the IBM site. I had to change my Ruby code to use the WSDL instead of the API that uses the URL and namespace. But as it turns out this service no longer exists either!

So I'll hunt down another stock quote Web service with a similar schema and post the updated Ruby file to the end of this post later. There are several out there, it's just a matter of finding whcih one is still there. I might use Yahoo.

First I built a couple of classes to write an atom based feed - an atom.xml file. These two classes handle writing out the feed header information and then each of the entries.

Tom had emailed me from the plane and explained in the email that he was using the Connexion service from Boeing. I emailed him back-and-forth a couple of times (at one point mentioning that IONA's Orbix was an enabler of the Connexion solution), and then decided I'd IM (instant message) him using Skype.

After some more back-and-forth instant messages I decided it would be cooler to just ring him using Skype. But I was afraid Tom might not have headphones or other equipment on the plane. I asked him over IM and he replied that he did not have a microphopne but he did have headphones. We decided that I would just talk and that Tom could IM back; telling me if the sound quality was good or bad. So I called him and when the ringing stopped I just started to talk. Tom replied over IM, "It's great quality". Of course it wasn't really a two-way conversation and maybe the quality wouldn't be so good if it were two-way. We'll test that the next time.

After we hung up my friend Dave Keller called me on Skype. I told him about Tom's and my experiment. He was impressed too and asked "I wonder how much that costs?" I said I didn't know but I'd ask Tom the next time .... "wait a minute. I'll just ask Tom now." I sent an instant message to Tom and he replied with the cost. "Talk about real-time", Dave said to me.

Pretty neat! What's cool too is that I'm going to IM Tom the link to this article so he can read this story before he lands!

(BTW according to Tom the cost is $26.95 for 24 hours that can be used across multiple flights. Or $9.99 per hour. )

Older article on Skype here.