Re: REST, Conversations and Reliability

I don't think it's so bizarre. The SOAP1.2 Part 1 spec defines in terms of
XML Infoset, according the responsibility of a SOAP node to ensure
a lossless exchange of the infoset, by whatever means, between adjacent
nodes. Part 1 also defines a Binding Framework which builds on this
requirement (lossless exchange, by whatever means of the XML infoset
representing the SOAP message).

The SOAP1.2 Part 2 HTTP binding prescribes a normative (if optional)
use of the media type application/soap+xml which in turn prescribes
an XML1.0 second edition serialization of the XML Infoset representing
the SOAP message.

What this provides is for other, possibly optimized, possibly proprietary,
serializations to be used in circumstances that warrant, permit, and/or
possibly
prefer their use.

It is the binding specification which provides interoperability between
nodes that
share a (possibly different)  implementation of  the same binding
specification.
Real interop comes from thorough testing such as described by Paul
and of the likes being undertaken in WS-I.

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
Architect, Emerging e-business Industry Architecture
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
phone: +1 508 234 3624


                                                                                                                                  
                      Paul Prescod                                                                                                
                      <paul@prescod.net        To:       www-ws-arch@w3.org                                                       
                      >                        cc:                                                                                
                      Sent by:                 Subject:  Re: REST, Conversations and Reliability                                  
                      www-ws-arch-reque                                                                                           
                      st@w3.org                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                  
                      08/08/2002 10:14                                                                                            
                      AM                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                  




I agree that the use of infoset rather than syntax is a bizarre choice
from an interoperability point of view but I don't see it as any worse
than the fact that the spec allows people to use standardized XML syntax
over proprietary protocols that will not be able to speak to each other.
Even SOAP running over open protocols is not compatible if different
people choose different protocols. A message sent over SOAP over SMTP is
not going to get to a SOAP/HTTP recipient except through a specialized
intermediary.

The SOAP specification consistently emphasizes surface-level flexibility
("do your own thing") over interoperability ("we'll tell you what to
do."). Wire level interoperability comes not from the specification
itself but by the N*M testing done on SoapBuilders, with Microsoft's
toolkit behaviour having a particularly strong weighting in importance.
--
XML, Web Services Architecture, REST Architectural Style
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Received on Thursday, 8 August 2002 11:03:49 UTC