- From: Mark Baker <distobj@acm.org>
- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 20:57:55 -0500
- To: Christopher B Ferris <chrisfer@us.ibm.com>
- Cc: "'www-ws-arch@w3.org '" <www-ws-arch@w3.org>
(sorry Chris, I meant to send this to the list) On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 10:48:46AM -0500, Christopher B Ferris wrote: > Okay, let me ask once more, what is the action being performed on a HTTP > POST? POST is the action. For example, POSTing a purchase order to a purchase order processor. The only action in that interaction, is "POST"; the URI identifies the processor, and the body on the POST request is a representation of a purchase order (with no method). > The RFC specifically > states that it is determined by the server and can be just about anything > it wants it to mean. Yes, but if the action is anything other than POST (like "getStockQuote", etc..), then visibility is reduced. POST is the catch-all HTTP method, but it does have a use separate from tunneling, and using it in that way is how visibility is maintained. Moreover, for every action you tunnel through the POST body, I can show you a solution to the same problem using HTTP (likely more than just POST), without an action in the POST body. That solution is more visible. > There may be > apparent visibility, but in truth, there is none. All that can be said of > the HTTP POST method is that the method > is not GET, PUT, DELETE, HEAD or OPTIONS. If anything, when using POST, > having the entity body > well understood and easily parsable increases visibility rather than > reducing it. Ad hoc entity body or > various form encoding is IMO far less visible because it is not > standardized. > > As has been pointed out, Web services is also not exclusive to HTTP and Yes, of course. That's why the "action" on an SMTP message-send is DATA, unless another one goes in the body or subject line, like "subscribe www-ws-arch". > one of the objectives > is that the service should be capable of being bound to any number of > underlying protocols without > requiring that the service itself be changed. Whoa, where'd that last part come from? Reference please. I agree that protocol independance is a good thing, but not such that there's no semantic difference between using HTTP and SMTP, for example. Of couse there's a difference; they're different applications. MB -- Mark Baker. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. http://www.markbaker.ca Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis
Received on Tuesday, 25 February 2003 20:54:42 UTC