- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 11:41:49 -0400
- To: "Williams, Stuart" <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
Stuart Williams writes: >> it occurred to me that simply 'overloading' >> a null request-message (ie. a requesting >> node that requests an exchange and presents >> no outbound infoset from which to from the >> entity body of an HTTP request) to use >> HTTP GET would yield something of very similar >> spirit to your proposal. I think you're proposing a simple HTTP GET, returning a SOAP envelope. That's an OK thing to do, but at the responding node it's not SOAP; the SOAP processing model doesn't apply, SOAP faults can't be generated, it can't be relayed through a SOAP intermediary perhaps through another underlying protocol. It's essentially an HTTP pull, causing a one-way SOAP message to be sent to the requestor. Sensible, but different. My SOAP envelope is not magical (sorry for the cute phraseology). It's a legal and appropriate SOAP envelope that says exactly what it means: GET the resource. The fact that it has a clean mapping to HTTP is intentional, but not its only use. It can appropriately be used in any context where a RESTful GET is intended. In principle (though I ruled it out in the initial proposal), it can be extended to be used with other SOAP headers, as long as we watch out for safety issues. Most importantly, it's a SOAP message useable with the usual request/response message exchange pattern, and processed by the usual SOAP processing rules at the responding node. That said, I have no problem with a (possibly) additional specification calling for a simple HTTP GET of a SOAP message (interestingly, and this is intentional, the results on the wire would be essentially indistinguishable). The difference comes in whether the responding node is implemented as a SOAP endpoint or merely an HTTP server. If we want to distinguish these cases, we can make appropriate use of SOAPAction. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Noah Mendelsohn Voice: 1-617-693-4036 IBM Corporation Fax: 1-617-693-8676 One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Friday, 26 April 2002 12:00:47 UTC