endpoint terminology confusion

I am becoming a little bit confused by WS-Terminology as of late, and I 
am hoping to clear up some confusion as to what exactly is meant by an 
"endpoint".  I'm not sure if this list is the best place to ask, but I 
don't know of a better one at the moment..

In the WS-A proposal, an endpoint is defined as: "A Web service endpoint 
is a (referenceable) entity, processor, or resource where Web service 
messages can be targeted."

And allow me to bring in the WSDL 2.0 definition for my question: "An 
endpoint associates a network address with a binding."

I am confused about where the endpoint actually is in the stack. For 
example, SOAP is theoretically transport independent. I would define an 
endpoint as the transport agnostic part which processes the Envelope. 
Then I could theoretically share my soap service over many transports 
(http, smtp, etc).  But I could see how an endpoint could also be 
defined in such a way that it only has one address? Or does WS-A not 
even care - just as long as its referencable? Or am I comparing apples 
to oranges with the above definitions?

Cheers,

- Dan

-- 
Dan Diephouse
Envoi Solutions LLC
http://netzooid.com

Received on Saturday, 7 May 2005 07:12:13 UTC