Re: Mandator wsa:Action (was Re: WS-Addr issues)

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 08:00:01AM -0800, David Orchard wrote:
> My argument is that even with these negatives, I think in the large
> majority of cases, a mandatory Action is useful because it fundamentally
> enables self-describing messages.  This enables:
> - greater visibility into the message
> - simpler processing of the message by applications or intermediaries
> - simpler development of applications
> - simpler message creation
> - more flexible deployment of services
> - higher performant

Big +1

> I'll say again that I would have *loved it* if the SOAP 1.2 WG had
> defined a binding for SOAP to HTTP that enabled a SOAP infoset to be
> serialized using HTTP as a transfer protocol, and I had proposed such a
> thing.

We did that, Dave.  When we decided not to use the 2xx response codes to
transfer SOAP faults, that's exactly what we did.  I understand that a
lot of people didn't realize that, because their mental model of SOAP
was that the envelope encapsulated all the semantics of the message
(i.e. the protocol independent view), but that interpretation wasn't
actually licensed anywhere in the specification itself.

>  Then WSA could say that an HTTP verb became the WSA:Action value
> and I could live with WSA:Action being optional as a header block *on
> the wire* but required *in the infoset*.  But we don't have that world.
> In the infoset means as a header block given the SOAP HTTP binding we
> have.  And I can't see us being able to create another binding in the
> WS-A group.  Maybe we could beg the XMLP group to figure this out, but I
> can't see that either.

Or, we could define a special value for wsa:Action that means "the
operation in effect is the one from the underlying protocol".  Of
course, that would only make sense for application protocols, not
transport protocols, but it would address the layering problem that
you're talking about there.

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca

Received on Monday, 8 November 2004 16:21:19 UTC