RE: SOAP Encoding - Arrays

The reason for the SOAP:array attribute was two fold:

1) We wanted the conformance (capacity) of the array to appear in the
initial element. This is super important for supporting both Java/CLR
and for NDR/CDR efficiently.

2) We wanted the equivalent of xsi:type but with support for arrays (and
arguably typed references). Unfortunately, SOAP/1.1 and earlier were
written during a period of immense churn over in Schemas, so SOAP/1.1
never had a chance to really finish this off. 

DB


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Simon Fell [mailto:soap@zaks.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 11:09 AM
> To: xml-dist-app@w3.org
> Subject: SOAP Encoding - Arrays
> 
> One thing i've never fully understood is why arrays are special when
> it comes to type information, why must we include the type of the
> array elements in the message, when for all other types, its contained
> in external metadata (schema, etc).
> 
> Thanks
> Simon
> www.pocketsoap.com