Re: supporting SOAP-GET MEP (was: Re: service references)

Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote:
> "Paul Prescod" <paul@prescod.net> writes:
> 
>>Plus you have a very messy relationship 
>>between the SOAP-for-GET feature and the rest of the web services 
>>architecture (to say nothing of the Web architecture).
> 
> 
> Why is support SOAP-GET hard to support in WS? That's just another
> way to bind an Input-Output style operation (aka MEP) in WSDL.
> Abstractly, there's nothing different between that and another way
> of doing an Input/Output operation .. the fact that its an HTTP
> GET outgoing instead of a SOAP call never really shows up at the 
> programmer level.

I can't say what will and won't show up at the programmer level because 
it depends on WSDL features that AFAIK are not done yet and how those 
are bound into future versions of programming languages.

Here's what is messy:

Let's say I have a purchase order item/object/instance/entity/thing. If 
I want to GET the item's XML representation, I use the GET MEP and 
address the thing directly.

GET http://www.someobject.com/purchasing_service/purchase_orders/1

If I want to, let's say, mutate the thing, I have to do that through the 
service endpoint:

POST http://www.someobject.com/purchasing_service

<soap:stuff>
....
    <add_item>
       <purchase_order_instance_id>1</purchase_order_instance_id>
       <item>Shoes</item>
    </add_item>
</soap:stuff>

It should be uniform. I should GET directly to the purchase order URI 
and POST directly to it. I should never have to indirect through the 
purchasing service URI (as is common today).

  Paul Prescod

Received on Tuesday, 24 September 2002 13:04:39 UTC