New issue: Can the "use" attribute be eliminated?

I took an action item in today's telcon to formulate
a possible new issue on whether the "use" attribute
isn't redudant and can be eliminated. This has been
discussed (among others) in the soaptf [1]. Following
is the "use" attribute rationale extracted and slightly
re-formulated.


Can the "use" attribute be eliminated?
--------------------------------------

The "use" attribute (soap:body, soap:header and soap:headerfault element)
has possible values: "literal" and "encoded". The following combinations
of style/use are possible:
  document/literal - makes sense
  document/encoded - makes sense (e.g. for docs using the SOAP data model)
  rpc/literal      - does this make sense? Probably not, because RPC
                     implies a special encoding or format.
  rpc/encoded      - makes sense (RPC even requires encoded)

Given that there can be used different encoding styles, and when
we have use="encoded" also encodingStyle="..." has to be specified,
isn't use="encoded" redundant? Even more,
- doesn't encodingStyle="someURI" imply use="encoded"
- and isn't a missing encodingStyle or encodingStyle="" equivalent
  to use="literal"?

Proposal:
  As the "use" attribute appears to be redundant
  eliminate it and just use the "encodingStyle" attribute
  to express "literal" via an empty string value and "encoded"
  via a non-empty string value.



See also:
Issue 45 [2] and 48 [3]; "use" attribute of [...] should be optional
and Arthur's encodingStyle proposal [4].

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2002Jul/0039.html
[2]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/desc/issues/wsd-issues.html#x45
[3]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/desc/issues/wsd-issues.html#x48
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2002Sep/0018.html



Regards, Dietmar.

Received on Thursday, 5 September 2002 13:50:28 UTC