Re: On subsetting XML...

noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:

> I think the major practical implication is that SOAP messages are somewhat 
> limited in their ability to carry arbitrary XML documents fragments as 
> Body or Header data.  XML is sufficiently broken in its ability to nest 
> such arbitrary XML (conflicting entity definitions and inability to send 
> nested DOCTYPE, for example) that we never could have achieved general 
> container support in any case.  As it happens, the semantics of a PI in a 
> SOAP body would be very questionable.  Does it apply only to the body, or 
> to the SOAP message as a whole?

This line of argument is bogus.  PIs are explicitly stated to be 
messages to a particular application, which means that the application 
should identify how it wants to be addressed and what messages it's 
interested in, and can safely ignore anything that isn't intended for it 
(which I assume every SOAP implementation would).  The XMLP arguments 
for not wanting DTDs were very convincing, the arguments on PIs entirely 
unconvincing.  Just my opinion of course. -Tim

Received on Thursday, 16 January 2003 17:21:40 UTC