RE: WSD Requirements: add a requirement about safe and idempotent characteristics

> DaveO recently said something similar when he suggested that a GET
> binding for SOAP complicated matters by giving developers two ways to do
> the same thing.  So you're in good company with this belief.
>
> GET and POST are both application methods, and they do fundamentally
> different things, as you'd expect different application methods to do.
> Almost nothing that is suitable for GET is suitable for POST, and vice
> versa.

I definitely agree with this view, though I would not try to enforce other
people to respect it. I would just comment that if an operation is
implemented using GET in one situation then it should be implemented as GET
in all situation and never as POST (and vice versa).

Regardless, the point is that we do want to allow multiple protocol bindings
for the same operation. Even if that operation is always an HTTP POST, it
may also be bound to SMTP. And I may have two different ways to bind it to
HTTP POST, e.g. to use different set of headers, and two ways to bind it to
GET, e.g to use two different set of parameters.

What I want to know, regardless of how many bindings exist, and before I
even discover all of them, is how the operation would work. I want to know
that form the abstract point of view (input, output, etc) it would work the
same way.

I guess we differ since I am looking at the definition of the operation in
isolation from any specific service that offers it, and apply that view to
any number of services that may offer it. I do the discovery at design time
rather than run-time.

arkin

>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.   http://www.markbaker.ca
>
>    Will distribute objects for food
>

Received on Tuesday, 3 December 2002 21:26:51 UTC