Re: Need new MEP for SMTP binding

>> In starting work on the SMTP protocol binding however, 
>> I feel that it's best to avoid request/response because 
>> SMTP is not a request/response protocol.

In that case, almost all email seems to be tunneling through SMTP. 
Certainly the majority of my email comes with a Reply-to field as 
standardized by RFC 822. I'm uisng it right now to reply to your note! 
That feels very much like request/response to me.  I think what we're 
doing in sending SOAP over email is absolutely in the spirit of RFC 822 
email, as customarily used through SMTP and a variety of other email 
systems.

If what you're working on is intended to be a first class, deployable SMTP 
binding, then these details do have to be right, but I claim that's beyond 
the scope of our charter (as I say, I think they're already right, but you 
obviously remain concerned).  I would prefer not to spend time debating it 
on the critical path to last call.   Insofar as we're trying to make sure 
that it's possible to use the binding framework to build more than one 
binding,  I think we've clearly demonstrated that.  In short, I would 
prefer that we just let this debate go for awhile, and focus our energies 
on getting the core spec right.  I'm not convinced that the issues on the 
table in this thread are pertinent to that goal.

[FWIW, the reason I think we will eventually need a new MEP is that the 
current Req/Resp is implicitly targeted at relatively rapid responses.  In 
practice, we hold the HTTP connections open and use HTTP response.  I 
think there will be other Req/Resp traffic that will take 
minutes/hours/days, and I expect that email would be more commonly used 
for that.  I would expect that systems like MQSeries could support either 
a quick or a long running req/resp.   Anyway, having mentioned this, I 
want to reiterate that I would prefer to close this debate now (just my 
preference), agree that we've done everything we need to in this area for 
now, and focus on getting to last call.]

Thank you!

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Noah Mendelsohn                              Voice: 1-617-693-4036
IBM Corporation                                Fax: 1-617-693-8676
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
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Received on Thursday, 14 March 2002 12:08:22 UTC