Real-world tools #5: IP*Works! SSL

It's been a while and for that I apologise, although perhaps many of you are grateful that it's taken 2 months for me to post. Usual stuff, I know you're all up against the same things. Deadlines, massive development schedules, testing, meetings... you know, real-world stuff.

I wanted to get back into this by explaining briefly why I chose IP*Works! from /n software. It came about because part of our payroll product needed to consume a web service written by (or for) the UK's revenue department, HMRC.

Version 1 of this web service was more basic than its successor, and as a result the standard SOAP Web Services tools that came with Delphi 6 were sufficient to do the job. Good old Delphi does the trick again, out of the box.

A year or so after version 1, the whole HMRC service was redesigned and so version 2 of the web service was born. Whilst it remained on the SOAP platform (due to a unanimous decision from the software developers that had to ultimately consume it), they introduced an element into version 2 that Delphi 6 did not handle: SOAP headers.

At this point, I had 3 options. Option 1 was to move to Delphi 7 in which support for SOAP headers was introduced as standard. Option 2 was to try the Indy Soap which also claimed to support SOAP headers. Option 3 was to buy a third-party product.

My preferred option was number 2, not least because it enabled me to stay with the version of Delphi I was on and we were already using the awesome Indy components for other HTTP, FTP and SMTP work. However, I failed 100% to even get this code to compile despite the help of the indy-soap-public Yahoo group. I decided this was going to be too much of a battle to even get started and so investigated option 1, upgrading Delphi.

This was a tricky decision, because although Delphi 7 would have given me what I needed, Delphi 2005 had been released by then. I felt that it would be ridiculous to spend all the time and effort moving from D6 to D7, along with upgrading all the third-party tools, etc, when it wasn't even the latest release. But I couldn't justify at that time a move to D2005 because it was taking a knock amongst its users, the cost was much higher and, crucially, I couldn't get a definitive answer on whether the SOAP stuff from D6/7 would work in D2005.

After coming to the disappointing decision that I wasn't going to upgrade from Delphi 6 at this time, and with development time running out, option 3 remained: a third-party tool. This was my least preferred for reasons I have explained in earlier posts: I don't like tabs and tabs of third-party components when I could have used a standard one. However, sometimes the guys who write these third-party tools are experts and sell stacks of their product for good reason, and IP*Works! fell under this category.

I had to buy the more expensive SSL version because the HMRC web service was run on a secure server but this wasn't a real issue. It essentially meant that I got all of the same components as with the non-SSL version but with the option to use secure communications or not.

IP*Works! SSL V6 Delphi Edition (still the current release) is a terrific product and I got the secure web service running within days, including all the extra SOAP header bits that I'd not been able to do with D6. If I hadn't have had such success with the other Indy components (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc) then I would have used the IP*Works! ones. It turns out that it was an expensive suite for just using 1 component for one utility, but it is a killer utility that pushed us ahead of the competition for a while.

When (not if) I finally do makr the jump to D2007 or RAD Studio 2007, it's likely I'll try and redo this utility to use Delphi's in-built SOAP objects because that it always my goal, to get back to as few third-party ties as possible. But for now the IP*Works! components are solid, robust, well designed and well documented and this is a purchase I didn't regret.

Although, an asterisk and an exclamation mark in a product's name drives me crazy!