RE: Requesting WSDL Files

There are actually current discussions in the WSDL 2.0 group about
introducing similar concepts at a transport-agnostic level. See recent
notes at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2004Jul/thread.html on
Issue 169 thread.
 
Ugo

	-----Original Message-----
	From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Savas Parastatidis
	Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 11:32 AM
	To: Anne Thomas Manes; www-ws-arch@w3.org
	Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files
	
	

	Does it? Doh! My apologies. I didn't know about that.

	 

	I think that's the wrong thing to do since it's transport
protocol-specific. Oh well... it's there now, so nothing to do about it!

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

	
  _____  


	From: Anne Thomas Manes [mailto:anne@manes.net] 
	Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 3:18 PM
	To: 'Savas Parastatidis'; 'Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)';
www-ws-arch@w3.org
	Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files

	 

	SOAP 1.2 adds support for the WebMethod feature - which permits
you to use HTTP GET  to invoke a Web service that takes no input message
but returns an output message.

	 

	
  _____  


	From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org
[mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Savas Parastatidis
	Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 6:09 PM
	To: Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler); www-ws-arch@w3.org
	Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files

	 

	I am talking about SOAP over HTTP. In this case, there is no
such thing as an HTTP GET. You need to POST a SOAP message no matter. At
least that's my understanding.

	--
	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 11:02 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?