Microsoft launches the new MSDN XML Web Services Developer Center.

Created a Text To Speech (TTS) - WebService which uses Festival to do the TTS. You may have noticed the little speaker-icons under each blog-item. Well... click it to get spoken to!

Festival is mainly for UNIX and is C-source only, but thanks to excellent building-instructions even I was able to build it on our Win-box. After building I wrote a little WebService using Visual Studio .NET which starts up Festival and converts an incoming string to a WAV-sound file. After that I use LAME to convert WAV to MP3 (Flash can only load mp3's).

Just put a demo online of a webservice which converts files in AutoDesk's AutoCAD DWG-format into SVG. The DWG is uploaded to a server which runs a little app that does the conversion to SVG. Check it out here.

Thanks Jarle for this simple solution to Flash cross-domain security issues. Just redirect the request...

<?php 
header("location: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/resources/macromedia_resources.xml");
?>

Needed PHP-code:

$soapclient = new soapclient( $URL );
$parameters = array("translationmode"=>$translationmode, "sourcedata"=>$sourcedata);
$ret = $soapclient->
call($operation, $parameters, $namespace, $soapaction);
echo $ret ;

Flash ActionScript:

var doc = new XML(strXML);
var resp = new XML();
resp.contentType = "text/xml";
resp.onLoad = MyOnload;
resp.ignoreWhite = true;
doc.sendAndLoad( pURL, resp );

doc is the SOAP-request which is then send to the PHP-script which returns data from the requested service. After looking at all other possibilities for Flash to consume SOAP-webservices, this seems to be the most simple way of doing things.

Bottomline: As far as I can see Flash always needs some kind of server-side scripting, whether it be PHP, ASP, Flash Remoting or something else, to get around the cross-domain security issues

Update: the Translat0r is now also online here

Play a game of chess with a webservice. Uses a PHP-script as SOAP proxy.

Concluding my investigation of Flash MX used as a consumer of SOAP Web Services:

Security issues ('across domain data access') are main problem in connecting Flash MX to any WebService located in a different domain then the SWF. Can't use sendAndLoad etc.

• workaround #1: server-side script (PHP/ASP etc) makes call.
  
• workaround #2: use JavaScript + XMLHTTP on webpage with SWF
  
• workaround #3: Macromedia's Flash Remoting. same as #1. Mmmm, i think i stick to PHP/NuSOAP for now...  All XML-stuff in Flash is still a pain in the neck. Maybe for ColdFusion & JRUN buffs -  this is not for me. I like PHP!

Guess workaround #1 is the beter solution, considering one has to fiddle with IE's security settings to make workaround #2 work.