Developing communicator using soap

Question

I'm supposed to implement a client-server application using SOAP. The idea is to create server which will be intermediary in communication between clients. Every client should have ability to connect with server (in response it gets the list of actually connected users) and method to send a message to chosen client. Server should have ability to pass forward received message to given user and resend the list of connected users whenever someone goes offline. My problem is that i don't how to do it...should i use RMI to create communication between server and clients?
if i would do that with rmi - i would have the ability to invoke remote methods. in example, if someone goes offline i would just invoke a method updateList(string) on every client. or maybe i should do it with sockets? but i can't invoke remote methods there (as far as i know), i can only create connection and use streams to send data....i've heard also about tomcat + apache axis - where i can post my server as a web service, but i don't have any idea how i could communicate with clients - how i would pass forward a message or update informations to connected clients, i don't know. Or maybe there is some other way to do so?

Answer 1

Yes Srinivas,
ur scenario should work.It doesnot matter if u r treating System A as sender as well as receiver.I guess u r created a outbound interface and from that u have created the client WSDL.And for reciver side u r already having a WSDL.
so ur scenario is SOAP<->XI<->SOAP.
now u can send ur request by any SOAP editor like XML SPY/SOAPUi.
and if ur configuration is correct u should get the response.
regards
biplab