RE: text/xml for SOAP (and XP) considered harmful

>I think the key point here is Simple "Object Access" Protocol. 
>If we really are accessing an object, then why are we saying 
>it is text?. 

I wouldn't get too hung up upon the spelling of the SOAP acronym - if
you read the spec there are many possible uses of SOAP.

>text/xml is such a generic one, what if its XML-RPC or 
>"my-own-xml-on-the-wire-in-the-format-we-define-dotcom" ?.
>
>Also is there any guarantee that XML is always going to be 
>"text" on the wire, what if the payload is compressed?. 

That is a different question entirely. In HTTP one could use the
Content-Encoding or the Transfer-Encoding mechanisms for this. 

>I too consider text/xml to be harmful, in terms of future 
>extensibility and potentially future protocols that may just 
>be text based and XML.

This has absolutely no impact on extensibility - it is just a token.

Henrik