RE: i0001: EPRs as identifiers (why XML?)

On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 15:09, Jonathan Marsh wrote:
> To add to DaveO's response, remember the purpose of the sub-address.
> It's used in conjunction with the address URI to enable the
> infrastructure to deliver the message to its ultimate destination.  

That's a particular implementation choice.  It doesn't make sense 
to design the spec around one particular imlementation model.  

If the WG is contemplating such a fundamental departure from the 
Web architecture as using EPRs instead of URIs as Web resource
identifiers, then there should be some very compelling
implementation-independent use cases that clearly demonstrate 
the need.

> It's
> designed to work with SOAP, which defines headers for the purpose of
> delivering the message to the ultimate SOAP destination.  

I guess this raises an important question: To what extent should 
Addressing be tied to SOAP?

> SOAP headers
> are XML.  Thus it is quite natural for RefProps to be XML as well, to
> eliminate a translation or binding process from some other form (plain
> text?) to XML.  A model that wasn't SOAP-centric perhaps wouldn't get as
> much synergy from XML.

This is presupposing that RefProps are *necessary*.  Are they?  Please
show the use cases that demonstrate this need.

Without realistic use cases that clearly demonstrate the need, 
RefProps look very much like an artifact of a particular 
implementation model.

-- 

David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard