Re: RFC: Attributes and XML-RPC

   
In responce to discussion based on:

   From: "John Tigue" <john.tigue@tigue.com> 
   To: <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk> 
   Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 09:17:49 -0700 

Perhaps my memory fails me but I clearly remember being ina SOAP meeting at Microsoft where a very wrong headed gentlemanfrom Redmond (name withheld to protect the confused)responding to my question "why no attributes". One highprofile XML guy from Microsoft who was present at themeeting was taken aback by the decisions made. The first gentleman expressed the opinion that attributes in general were an unnecessary redundancy in the XML spec and he would havenothing to do with them in SOAP.---------------------------------------------

 

OK, not supporting attributes makes SOAP simpler in some ways.  But

given a data or document centric Web Services model I define by Web

Service with WSDL / XML schema.  So, according to SOAP spec, I simply do

not use attributes.  This is great when I create a schema from scratch,

but the problem I have is often I want to use existing schema already in

common use for the type of data my Web Service is dealing with.  For

example I want to build a MyData Web Service to pass around messages with

MyData documents.  But the pre-existing MyData schema uses attributes

which are lost when sent via Web Service frameworks.  

 

This does not simplify, this create a problem that I must invent a new

redundant schema only because the message communication system (SOAP) does not support attributes although the business processes on either side do.

Must I create a special "transport within SOAP schema?" which encodes attributes as elements?  How are people currently dealing with this

problem?

 

--Bennett Cookson

 



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