Re: Semantics of WSDL vs. semantics of service

Xuan,

you seem to misunderstand the purpose of the semantic annotations in
WSDL. They are not meant to indicate what the <operation> element means,
instead they intend to tell you something about the operation that is
performed when the appropriate message (whose structure is described
within the <operation> element) is sent.

There is an actual service behind a WSDL file (this is a simplification,
there is a service behind a WSDL <service> construct, and maybe there's
functionality behind a WSDL <interface> construct), and the semantic
annotations intend to point to the semantics of the actual service.

Are you saying making such pointers is not possible or useful?

A bit more below.

Jacek

On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 11:42 -0500, Shi, Xuan wrote:
> Jacek,
> 
> Dr. Martin is unhappy to see that I messed up his original thread so I
> replied to you separately. What I mentioned previously is that adding
> semantic annotations into WSDL is a way to explain the meaning of WSDL,
> other than the meaning of Web services. Given the example of ESRI's Address
> Finder Web services, by now it has three versions with different WSDL
> interface definition. However, the meaning of this service keeps the same in
> three different versions. So if you add semantic annotations into WSDL, it
> just describes the meaning of the interface, not the meaning of the service,
> especially considering most of the interface definitions in WSDL have
> nothing related to the *meaning* of this service. In this case, your
> semantic annotations will be different since the interfaces are different,
> but the *meaning* of the service has been the same in three different
> versions.

I said earlier that the semantic annotations will *not* be different on
the different interfaces, exactly because the meaning of the service is
the same. The semantic annotations will show that the semantics are the
same. That's the purpose.

Received on Wednesday, 15 March 2006 12:40:21 UTC