Re: Action item: HTTP binding for accepts header and output Serialization.

* Hugo Haas <hugo@w3.org> [2004-06-24 12:39+0200]
> However, I am not sure how this feature would work with the input
> using GET and foo:myDataType in your example, though I have to admit I
> don't get what the current one does in this case either.

I've just read the new version of the Application Data feature and
realized that it's what you meant when you said Abstract Data feature
which is the new name for ADD, which threw me off.

Looking at the action item from [1], I think that there are two things
to address:
- how expectedMediaType impacts (input|output|fault)Serialization.
- how expectedMediaType impacts the Accept header.

For the former, as I said in my previous email, I think that we can
have a feature which says that the value of
(input|output|fault)Serialization in inherited from the
expectedMediaType information on the message reference. Note that it
would mean that the serialization values could be a list of media
types, which I guess is OK in this particular case.

Regarding the latter, let me first see if I understand your example
correctly: your document says that the input message may contain an
Accept header, without specifying the value. I don't think that we
even need to say that. I think that this is always the case that an
HTTP message may contain an Accept header, and that the application
should deal with this accordingly. What we can say, which would I
think discharge the WG of the action item, would be to say that:
- expectedMediaType placed on an input message is equivalent to an
  Accept header from the POV of the service.
- an HTTP request from a requester agent may always contain an Accept
  header; the value of the header should take into account the
  expectedMediaType information for subsequent output messages from
  the provider agent to make sense.

Does that make sense?

Regards,

Hugo

  1. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2004May/0074.html
-- 
Hugo Haas - W3C
mailto:hugo@w3.org - http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/