RE: Requesting WSDL Files

It's a "feature", not a requirement, and it enables SOAP to support the REST
architecture (which is protocol-specific). Regardless of whether or not it's
right or wrong, this feature prevents you from establishing a convention to
return the WSDL when you do an HTTP GET the Web service endpoint URL.
 
I think it's a better convention to specify a parameter:
http://service-endpoint-uri?wsdl <http://service-endpoint-uri/?wsdl> 
http://service-endpoint-uri?xsd <http://service-endpoint-uri/?xsd>  
http://service-endpoint-uri?policy <http://service-endpoint-uri/?policy>  
 
Anne
 
 
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From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Savas Parastatidis
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 2:32 PM
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?pull=
/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?