If you’ve been around programming for even a little bit you’re likely to have seen references to JavaBeans. In an effort to provide a similar remote method invocation (RMI) for PHP there is now a phpBeans project. I’m not entirely convinced that this is the way to go when compared to SOAP/XML-RPC/REST, but it an interesting additional option.
One of the things that could really propel something like phpBeans is the ability to make use of it in other languages. There is already a Ruby client, but I’m thinking that adding Java, Perl and Python clients would cover enough ground that many more people would be interested in it. In that respect SOAP/XML-RPC/REST has already beat the beans idea because both sides (client and server) can be in any language. That sort of flexibility certainly isn’t free, but it sure can be nice.
So I still haven’t come to any major conclusion on the idea of phpBeans. If I get a change I’ll try it out and see if it is something I want to pursue more seriously. It certainly has possibilities.