[fdifranco]

It sounds to me that you want to make a widget that talks to a database.

Look at this post and it might help you.

As far as web services go, PHP makes using Web Services quite simple to use. If you have access to a WSDL file then writing a SOAP client is very simple.

Here is the code for a simple, working SOAP client from my own website. In this particular example, you can specify a season (2000-2010), a week (1-17), and a code for a team ('GB' for Green Bay, 'ATL' for Atlanta, etc) and it will tell you the score of the game:

<?php
$oSoapClient = new SoapClient("http://www.footballbook.pro/fbk.wsdl");

$szGid = $oSoapClient->getGameId(2010,7,"ATL");
$aoGameProperties = $oSoapClient->getGame($szGid);

$szVis = $aoGameProperties['vis'];
$szHome = $aoGameProperties['home'];

$iVScore = $aoGameProperties['vscore'];
$iHScore = $aoGameProperties['hscore'];

echo "The score was $szVis $iVScore - $szHome $iHScore.\n\n";
?>

You can copy the code above into a file called SoapClient.php and then run it from the command line and the output would look like this:

# php SoapClient.php
The score was CIN 32 - ATL 39.

Again, I can't say that I understand completely what you are trying to achieve but I guarantee that you can do it in PHP and integrate it into VBulletin and that's coming from a Java guy.

I have made a lot of widgets that contain forms so I know it can be done.

Good luck,

-fab