[Zope-dev] Component model, webservices and xmlrpc?

[Jay, Dylan]

This is a question for those that understand where the component model and
webservices are headed with zope. I'm asking since I'm trying to understand
the direction zope is headed

I just had to let someone access some RDBS data easily. Its already used in
zope so I figured the easiest way was xmlrpc to the SQLMethod.
Of course it wasn't that simple since sqlmethods return results set classes
which are not marshalable via xmlrpc. In the end I had to write a python
script wrapper around the  sql method to turn it into a dictionary and
replace all the Missing objects to blank strings. 

My question is, in the brave new world of the component model etc would such
a scenario this be simpler? and how?

I myself can see two ways out:

 - have a better webservice framework that lets you return objects rather
than structures (more like com). I'm not sure if this what SOAP does or not.
It seems a big ask since essentially the state would need to be kept on
server side and proxy objects would need to connect back to that state for
some untermined period of time. Potentially ugly but I can see it being very
powerful.

 - Have the ability to turn abitary classes into mashallable data. In this
case the results class could support an results interface. There would be an
adapter that knew how to turn objects implementing the results interface
into xmlrpc marshallable data. Such adapters would be made for most standard
objects?

Am I right in saying the zope roadmap will make both of these possible in
the not too distant future?