Getting Started with JDM Web Services - Java Data Mining: Strategy, Standard, and Practice - page 376

embedded into HTML. PHP can be freely used, being related to the
Apache foundation, and is one of the most commonly used languages
for Web site development. We have chosen PHP to illustrate the
examples in this chapter for its simplicity of integration with Web
services. However, any programming language that integrates Web
services layers, such as Visual Basic for Excel, can be used.
Recently, PHP has been extended with a package, specifically
developed in PHP, called NuSOAP . This package enables the direct
use of Web services from PHP scripts. HTML documents can easily
include calls to external Web services in the pages accessed through
Web browsers. The role of NuSOAP is to translate PHP structures
into valid XML documents corresponding to SOAP messages. These
SOAP messages allow developers to create and consume Web
services based on SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, and HTTP 1.0/1.1.
Web servers that answer HTTP requests can run PHP scripts.
Figure 14-1 depicts a typical PHP application architecture and the
process of connecting to Web service providers.
In this scenario, we use PHP to write a Web page accessible by a
call center representative processing incoming calls. This page con-
tains fields the representative will fill through a Web browser inter-
face; each field corresponds to a question to be asked of the caller.
When all questions have been answered (and fields populated), the
system executes JDM Web services using singleRecordApply tasks on
each model found in the mining object repository (MOR) with a
name prefix “ Product .” We make two assumptions. First, all models
whose name follows the pattern “ Product-<Name> ” will be classifica-
tion models that predict the probability that the caller will buy a
given product <Name> . And second, all models with names begin-
ning with Product use the same apply input data. In our examples,
we use three caller attributes: education to represent the education

Web Server

Easy PhP

1- HTTP get 2- SOAP Requests

Web
Service
Provider

Web
Browser

NuSOAP

4- HTTP 3- SOAP Responses

Configuration

Figure 14-1 PHP application architecture.