RE: Protocol Bindings

> >>It would be interesting to hear. My intuition (and experience, FWIW) 
> >>is that applications will be designed to take advantage of the most
> >> appropriate transport, and specify which binding is in use.
> 
> I absolutely agree with this.
> 
> >So is SOAP really a protocol or is it yet another 
> >packaging/encapsulation format?
> 
> ...as opposed to yet another protocol ;? Protocols are used for all kind
> of purposes and exhibit all kind of properties and diving into what
> constitutes a protocol and how they can be classified is nothing less
> than a PhD subject.

An indeed I'm sure many good PhD's have been awarded to people who have
taken up this challenge :-)

> The discussion that we have had about the SOAP processing model will
> tell you that there is more than merely a wrapper - there is in fact a
> processing model that defines how to deal properly with SOAP messages
> and when to generate faults.

Certainly we have an imperative processing model for SOAP which tells us
what to do when handling a SOAP envelope and when to generate faults.

> It is true that SOAP by itself doesn't define many of the application
> layer characteristics that most other application protocols exhibit such
> as message exchange patterns, routing, correlation, etc. The reason
> being that I think we believe we have a good extensibility mechanism
> that allows us to add such features. Time will tell whether this is a
> valid assumption.

It might be good to test that assumption by creating a couple of really
useful extension modules... anyone fancy a crack at a multi-hop reliable
sequenced delivery (in spare non-WG time of course).

> Henrik

regards

Stuart

Received on Monday, 9 July 2001 11:16:01 UTC