Envelopes, messages, and app semantics

On Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 05:32:35PM +0200, Ingo Rammer wrote:
> > That depends.  Is the envelope a message?  If so, then the former.
> > If not, the latter.  Because not all SOAP envelopes are messages.
> 
> Pardon my ignorance, but in which scenario would you consider that the use
> of a SOAP envelope without implying message semantics would make sense? 

Well, using that book example, if I wanted to order a book by POSTing a
description of it to a book-ordering processor identified by some URI.
In that case, the complete SOAP/HTTP message would be;

POST some-uri HTTP/1.0
Content-Type: application/x-book+xml
Content-Length: xxx
[blank line]
<env:envelope env="...">
 <env:body>
  <book>
    <title>Some book</title>
    <author>Some author</author>
  </book>
 </env:body>
</env:envelope>

If you're asking *why* I'd want to do it that way, rather than just
creating a SOAP message with an "orderBook" element, one very important
reason is because I get improved visibility, and that message is more
likely to be allowed to traverse firewalls because of it.

> Sorry, I really don't buy into this. 

Don't worry, you're not alone. 8-)

MB
-- 
Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis