Connecting to the Server

• Now I need to get a connection to the server, and in return I get a cookie (oh joy!) which I need for all future calls to the server.

     my $logonSom = $soap->DatabaseLogon(
          SOAP::Data->name("dbname" => 'Sample Database'),
          SOAP::Data->name("username" => $username),
          SOAP::Data->name("password" => $password));
     my $cookie = $logonSom->valueof('//Envelope/Body/DatabaseLogonResponse/Cookie');

• Boy, that's a mouthful. And this is supposed to be a "Lite" module?

• Every call to a SOAP method requires a list of data values to be properly formatted in XML. The SOAP::Data package, part of SOAP::Lite, does this for you.

• Don't you love passing passwords in clear text over the network?

• You get a SOM object back from the server, which is an XML structure. The SOAP::SOM package decodes values for you, but you need to understand the structure, first.