Hi,
I think this is a good idea too. We have done work using webservices using both PHP & ASP.NET (though to be honest more with ASP.NET recently).
Whilst its true that occasionally you come across an issue thats related to your chosen development platform - I would say by far the majority of the issues we encounter occur whatever platform you are using e.g. relating to how to get optimal performance from the webservices for a particular type of query etc.
So whilst more code snippets would be nice (its always quicker to take some elses example as a jump start) - I think I would caution against anything that split the fairly small existing developer community that currently use the services at this stage. Obviously its nicer to have an example in the language you are trying to use - but frequently I'd quite happily settle for a working example in any language ;) - as swapping the syntax is normally a fairly trivial job once you've got something that works !
Pushing data onto the gateway is another step altogether - and maybe Jon/Steve/Andy can comment on current thinking on this.
Obviously the NBN data exchange format could be "pushed" to the gateway - but this is still an intermediate format that gets processed and uploaded every 2 weeks. I suspect that the ability to push data on a more record by record basis in real time may be a way off at the moment - though I'd be interested in quite what you are looking to achieve here - as I may quite easily have overlooked something !
I think my primary interests at the moment would relate to almost a set of second tier services / library routines that ran ontop of the NBN webservices that allowed you to do things such as:
- Produce a WMS / WFS webservice based on inderlying species data
- Return data in a format that can easily be displayed on Google maps / VE
- Return data as WKT
etc
All these could be done by the gateway team themselves (it would be great if they did ;) ) - but I suspect resources are limited - and at least with the services that exist such things are at least currently possible - and it maybe the gateway team are better focussed on enhacements to the core services allowing better filtering etc so allowing faster responses - which makes the above type of second tier services more useable.
We have developed most of the above - as have others - but certainly in our case they are normally half baked in that they serve the direct function required at the time rather than broadaning out to a more comprehensive generic service
Anyway - just my thoughtsss