I’m searching for an open source C++ framework for building webservices for a year. And now I was asked which one I would prefer (see Question at StackOverflow).
My favorites (all OpenSource and platform independent – not ordered) are currently:
GSOAP – http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~engelen/soap.html
pros:
- proven, reliable, very fast
- big documentation, many support
- still maintained – releases every 3-6 months
contras:
- WSDL/client generators are not free
- programming and embedding into existing apps isn’t so easy
- seems to be more C than C++
Apache AXIS C++ – http://ws.apache.org/axis/cpp/index.html
pros:
- proven, already in use in big projects
- (nearly) good documentation
- up to date, maintenance is ensured by Apache Foundation
- better/nicer C++ API
contras:
- heavy weight SDK / too many functionality for me
- not easy to implement it / many work to embed it into own app
- maybe not as fast and bigger footprint as GSOAP
Staff – http://code.google.com/p/staff/
pros:
- very small footprint
- easy and fast to integrate
contras:
- future maintenance is not clear / it’s (only) a Google summer of code project
- very early stage
- support party only in cyrillic
Conclusion
If I have to decide for a framework right now, I would take Apache AXIS – it’s proven and reliable and thus ready for productive use. Further it’s future maintenance is guaranteed by the Apache Foundation and I’m free to uase, modify and integrate AXIS as I want – even for my commercial applications.
I hope that helped a little bit 🙂