RE: Requesting WSDL Files

Responses inline marked by <atm> ... </atm>

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Sled [mailto:jsled@asynchronous.org] 
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 6:04 PM
To: Anne Thomas Manes
Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requesting WSDL Files

On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 17:15, Anne Thomas Manes wrote:

> It's a "feature", not a requirement, and it enables SOAP to support
> the REST architecture (which is protocol-specific). Regardless of 

How is REST protocol-specific?
<atm> Okay -- maybe REST isn't protocol-specific, but it is based on the
semantics of the HTTP protocol. Besides, the WebMethod feature defines a
binding only for HTTP. </atm>

> 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.

How does it prevent establishing convention?
I thought the original question was about a convention of using GET...?

<atm> It prevents us from establishing the convention that Savas was
suggesting -- that if you perform an HTTP GET on the service endpoint URI
(without a parameter), you will get back the WSDL. </atm>

> I think it's a better convention to specify a parameter:
> http://service-endpoint-uri?wsdl
> http://service-endpoint-uri?xsd
> http://service-endpoint-uri?policy

What is the better convention, here?

<atm> I'm saying that the prevailing convention of adding the ?wsdl
parameter is a better convention than not adding the parameter. I'm also
extrapolating and saying that we can expand this convention to return other
types of metadata, such as schema and policy. </atm>

I thought 'http://host:port/endpoint_path?wsdl' was the convention...

<atm> It is. But Savas was suggesting an even simpler convention (no
parameter). Unfortunately, Savas's suggestion is incompatible with the SOAP
1.2 WebMethod feature. </atm>

But I'm confused: why perform a query at all?
Isn't the WSDL just a file?

<atm> Not necessarily. Some tools generate the WSDL on the fly at deployment
time or when you query the service endpoint. </atm>

...jsled

Received on Friday, 2 July 2004 19:38:58 UTC