Comments/Question on WSDL

A few weeks ago I read WSDL [1] in preparation for the workshop but failed 
to send my comments anywhere. So now I'll correct that situation with the 
result that my comments are very brief/general.

As a newbie, I found some of the terminology and construction of WSDL 
difficult to understand. On the terminology side, I had to keep returning to 
section 2.1/2.4/2.6 to try to grok what a type, binding, message, service, 
and particularly port/port-type were.

When looking at the architecture and examples, I made a little breakthrough 
in reading the structure backwards. The structure is one of progressive 
construction, starting with types, messages, and building up to a service. I 
understood it much better by progressive deconstruction, starting with the 
service and breaking it down. One could argue that this is a 
syntactical/editorial issue, but I suppose the related architectural 
question is what requirements necessitate so much indirection? A little 
nesting could go a long way, and if you want to reuse something, then you 
can have a reference if necessary (schema is actually nice in this way: you 
nest your structures with a reference if necessary.).


[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl

__
Joseph Reagle Jr.                 http://www.w3.org/People/Reagle/
W3C Policy Analyst                mailto:reagle@w3.org
IETF/W3C XML-Signature Co-Chair   http://www.w3.org/Signature
W3C XML Encryption Chair          http://www.w3.org/Encryption/2001/

Received on Thursday, 5 April 2001 13:23:14 UTC