SOAP Detail Element Question

Section 5.4.5 of SOAP 1.2 part 1[1] includes the following two 
sentences which seem to be in conflict with each other:

- "The Detail element information item  is intended for carrying 
application specific error information related to the SOAP Body."
- "The presence of the  Detail element information item has no 
significance as to which parts of the faulty SOAP message were 
processed."

I wonder if this is a carry-over from SOAP 1.1[2] which includes the 
following:

"The detail element is intended for carrying application specific error 
information related to the Body element. It MUST be present if the 
contents of the Body element could not be successfully processed. It 
MUST NOT be used to carry information about error information belonging 
to header entries. Detailed error information belonging to header 
entries MUST be carried within header entries.

The absence of the detail element in the Fault element indicates that 
the fault is not related to processing of the Body element. This can be 
used to distinguish whether the Body element was processed or not in 
case of a fault situation."

It looks to me like SOAP 1.2 overturns the prohibition about using the 
fault detail to provide additional information about failures when 
processing header blocks, but its not completely clear. Should we 
remove "related to the SOAP Body" in the first quoted sentence or is 
that restriction intended to be preserved from SOAP 1.1.

I note that WS-Addressing[3] makes use of the Detail element for 
several of the faults it defines that are related to processing of 
WS-Addressing defined headers.

Thanks,
Marc.

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-soap12-part1-20030624/#faultdetailelement
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508/#_Toc478383507
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-ws-addr-soap-20041208/#_Toc77464328

---
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley at sun.com>
Web Technologies and Standards, Sun Microsystems.

Received on Tuesday, 11 January 2005 16:15:34 UTC