RE: endpoint terminology confusion

Dan,

I share your concern. In essence there is no agreed upon Web Services 
Architecture, and not everyone agree that if one were to exist that it would 
even be 'a stack'. 

As a result it is left as an exercise to the reader to look at each specification 
in turn for a definition and use the context to work out what is meant when 
an overloaded term such as "endpoint", "binding" or 
"message exchange pattern" is being used. Of course this piecemeal
approach doesn't help at all when specifications are combined, even those 
from the same stable, as the joint XMLP, WSA and WSD 'async' TF 
are currently finding out. 

I'm not sure that was very helpful!
Paul


-----Original Message-----
From:	public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org on behalf of Dan Diephouse
Sent:	Fri 5/6/2005 5:57 PM
To:	public-ws-addressing@w3.org
Cc:	
Subject:	endpoint terminology confusion


I am becoming a little bit confused by WS-Terminology as of late, and I 
am hoping to clear up some confusion as to what exactly is meant by an 
"endpoint".  I'm not sure if this list is the best place to ask, but I 
don't know of a better one at the moment..

In the WS-A proposal, an endpoint is defined as: "A Web service endpoint 
is a (referenceable) entity, processor, or resource where Web service 
messages can be targeted."

And allow me to bring in the WSDL 2.0 definition for my question: "An 
endpoint associates a network address with a binding."

I am confused about where the endpoint actually is in the stack. For 
example, SOAP is theoretically transport independent. I would define an 
endpoint as the transport agnostic part which processes the Envelope. 
Then I could theoretically share my soap service over many transports 
(http, smtp, etc).  But I could see how an endpoint could also be 
defined in such a way that it only has one address? Or does WS-A not 
even care - just as long as its referencable? Or am I comparing apples 
to oranges with the above definitions?

Cheers,

- Dan

-- 
Dan Diephouse
Envoi Solutions LLC
http://netzooid.com

Received on Saturday, 7 May 2005 18:00:07 UTC