RE: Requesting WSDL Files

Oh, wait a minute, that was dumb. Sorry.
 
Microsoft has chosen, if enabled, to return a test-bed for the service
from the simple GET.  Seems like a reasonable choice to me, but I don't
really want to debate that.  What I'd really like to know is whether
other vendors are using the "?wsdl" convention.  I have heard from one
person who seems to think that it is at least fairly widespread, but I
don't have details.

  _____  

From: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler) 
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 5:02 PM
To: 'Savas Parastatidis'; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files


How do you distinguish, then, between a GET that is intended to return a
WSDL file and a GET of a Web Service that takes no parameters but
returns something?  At least in the implementation I am familiar with,
if GET is enabled for a Web service that takes no parameters I think
it's just the base URL that invokes it.
 
 From: Savas Parastatidis [mailto:Savas.Parastatidis@newcastle.ac.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:49 PM
To: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler); www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files



If we assume HTTP, I would prefer the even simple approach of just doing
an HTTP GET on the URL. No need for a suffix. However, I personally
prefer the WS-MetadataExchange approach because it fits better with SOAP
and its transport protocol-independent. Also, it allows other metadata
information to be transmitted and I would argue that it's a very simple
spec. However, that's just me.

 

Regards,

--
Savas Parastatidis
http://savas.parastatidis.name
  

  _____  

From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 10:46 PM
To: Savas Parastatidis; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files

 

Hmmm.  Looks like a pretty heavyweight mechanism for such a simple task.
Although you're right that it's not fully general, it seems to me the
simple "?wsdl" HTTP method gets the 80-20 ... and it sure is simple.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Savas Parastatidis [mailto:Savas.Parastatidis@newcastle.ac.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:37 PM
To: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler); www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files

Dear Roger,

 

I don't think that there is a specification and I feel that one would be
unnecessary. The ?WSDL suffix can be used when HTTP is involved but how
do we get the WSDL of a Web Service when we use TCP/IP or SMTP or any
other protocol? That's the reason for the existence of the
WS-MetadataExchange specification. That will be the way to go. If you
know the endpoint of a Web Service, then you can ask it for its WSDL,
its policy, etc.

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/specs/default.aspx?p
ull=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/ws-metadataexchange.asp 

 

Regards,

--
Savas Parastatidis
http://savas.parastatidis.name
  

  _____  

From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 7:27 PM
To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Requesting WSDL Files

 

Here's a question that is sort of WSA-like.  I guess.  

We have some experience with WS interop, but so far it's all one
direction:  Web service on Windows server, clients on other platforms.
Sooner or later we will want to go the other direction.  One really nice
feature of the Microsoft .Net implementation of Web services is that if
you append "?WSDL" (or "?wsdl") to the URL of the Web service it will
return the WSDL file.  As far as I know this is not in any spec (I could
easily be wrong, of course), but it's clearly useful and I'm using it.
So the obvious questions are:

1 - Is this indeed part of some spec that I don't know about, so one
should expect it on other platforms? 

2 - If not, have other major vendors been doing this too?  Is it by any
stretch becoming a de facto standard? 

3 - If so, is there any case preference on platforms that tend to be
more case sensitive than Windows?