Re: WS-Addressing and Web architecture

Hi Mark.

* Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org> [2004-08-10 17:10-0400]
> I wanted to convey my concern about the WS-Addressing submission from
> a Web architecture perspective.
[..]
> Unlike other specs such as SOAP or WSDL, I see no way in which the EPR
> portion of this spec can be used in a manner even approaching
> being consistent with Web architecture.

I think that your comments apply more to the message information
headers, endpoint references being a tool for them.

As mentioned in the Team comment and as an example, the current
version of WS-Addressing does not talk about serializing certain
information outside of the SOAP envelope. The action parameter and the
request URI in the SOAP 1.2 HTTP binding are given as an example.

I recognize that there may be cases where one message is sent to
certain service which acts as a Web services gateway, dispatching
based on addressing headers, which may be the ones you are disputing.
However, the [destination] property is a URI, so the resource
receiving the message is still identified by a URI.

I believe that the concerns that you bring up here echo discussions
that we have had in the Web Services Architecture Working Group,
resulting in the SOA section[1] of the Web Services Architecture
document about the different uses of Web services.

> I'm not sure what action to take at this point.  I'd like to get your
> feedback first though.

My recommendation would be, if and when W3C creates a Working Group to
address this area, to use the usual ways to send comments to the
Working Group, that I trust you are familiar with.

Regards,

Hugo

  1. http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-arch-20040211/#service_oriented_architecture
-- 
Hugo Haas - W3C
mailto:hugo@w3.org - http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/