Issue: should WSDL be able to describe an operation with *anything* in the message?

Hi all,

I stumbled upon a scenario the other day where I'd like to be able to
describe an endpoint with a single logical operation ("accept" or
"notify" or something) that can accept any SOAP message. Somebody wanted
a WSDL for this endpoint and I found out that WSDL 1.1 with a single
message part of the type xs:anyType is not supported in doc/lit, and in
fact in 
WSDL 2 such a thing cannot be accomplished at all because every message
has exactly one XML element and the SOAP binding puts precisely that
element as a child of soap:Body.

Should WSDL be able to describe such an endpoint? I think so because it
is common in various message sink situations - a router, a topic,
generic notification sink etc.

I can see a simple solution that would state that if a GED is not
specified for a message, it can be everything. There are other
alternative solutions, but this seems the simplest and least bad.

Sorry about bringing this up so late,

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Systinet Corporation
                   http://www.systinet.com/

Received on Wednesday, 18 February 2004 09:51:30 UTC