- From: Mark Little <mark.little@arjuna.com>
- Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:13:44 +0000
- To: Mark Little <mark.little@arjuna.com>
- Cc: Mark Nottingham <mark.nottingham@bea.com>, public-ws-addressing@w3.org
There is some confusion as to what precisely wsa;Action is meant to represent in the current specification. However, most people seem to have the opinion that it is used to represent the semantics of the message contained in the SOAP body. In which case, this element is used for dispatching the message (similar to using an opcode in other distributed environments). However, if wsa:Action is used to optimize dispatching so that the same semantics do not have to be obtained by parsing the entire SOAP body, this is purely an optimization. As such, its presence or lack thereof does not affect the architecture/model defined by the specification; it is entirely feasible to implement the equivalent distributed application without wsa:Action, albeit in (perhaps) a less performant manner. The argument for adding wsa:Action is that many vendors want this optimization and standardizing on it has merit. The argument against is that dispatching isn't part of addressing and so shouldn't be in this specification; furthermore, there are vendors and users who simply don't need this functionality. In fact its presence doesn't even mean that the receiver has to use it, so in that regard it's optional at the receiver and yet mandatory at the sender. What the discussions over the past few days appear to show is that making wsa:Action mandatory is wrong. In the case where it isn't needed it encourages vendors/users to fill it with something that isn't valid "because it's there", which adversely affects interoperability. The lack of wsa:Action in a header sends a clear message to any receiver; its presence does not. Therefore, I propose that we make wsa:Action optional. Mark. ---- Mark Little, Chief Architect, Arjuna Technologies Ltd. www.arjuna.com
Received on Saturday, 6 November 2004 09:14:54 UTC