- From: John J. Barton <John_Barton@hpl.hp.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 10:51:21 -0800
- To: "Martin Gudgin" <mgudgin@microsoft.com>, <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
I have discussed this proposal with a few reasonable folks. They came to a different interpretation of the basic character of this proposal. So I'd like to see if I can clarify this basic aspect. As I understand it, the proposal says that SOAP processing of binary data will pretend that the data appeared in the SOAP message as base64 encoded character data. That is, no matter what the wire format might be, the processing algorithms will act as if the wire format were transformed in to a single long XML document with the binary parts encoded base64. This mapping of whatever wire format into a single document allows one to apply the infoset-based processing model to the single-document-equals-infoset object. Actual processing need not create the single document nor ever apply the base64 encoding explicitly. Is this the basic idea? Assuming I understand it then, this proposal provides a more rigorous foundation for the processing of binary data in SOAP messages and it will provide important guidance for developing the standards in this area. What I cannot see yet is why the Infoset-mapping process needs base64 at all. The only real value that we get from mapping binary into base64 is that XML parsers can recognize the angle brackets for the end-tag without accidently hitting one in the binary data. However we are not actually going to pass the binary through a base64 encoding and into a parser are we? So what bad things happen if we did exactly what the Infoset-addendum suggests, but just forget the base64 steps? John. At 09:41 AM 3/25/2003 -0800, Martin Gudgin wrote: >We have now posted the document illustrating an infoset approach to the >attachment feature. You can find html[1], pdf[2] and word docs[3]. This >document is intended to be a concrete realisation of the ideas laid out >in the white paper at[4]. > >Apologies for the delay. > >Gudge > >[1] http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/mgudgin/paswa/paswa.html >[2] http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/mgudgin/paswa/paswa.pdf >[3] http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/mgudgin/paswa/paswa.doc >[4] http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/02/26/binaryxml.html ______________________________________________________ John J. Barton email: John_Barton@hpl.hp.com http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/John_Barton/index.htm MS 1U-17 Hewlett-Packard Labs 1501 Page Mill Road phone: (650)-236-2888 Palo Alto CA 94304-1126 FAX: (650)-857-5100
Received on Tuesday, 25 March 2003 13:51:44 UTC