Re: versioning...

On Tuesday 05 March 2002 13:18, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> > If someone can present a scenario and definitions of what
> > these things mean
> > I might be more comfortable; otherwise it's seems to be
> > optional/advisable
> > cruft that's best left out.
>
> This is a pretty standard approach for protocol compatibility
> testing. It is already defined in HTTP.

Any ambiguity there is not as likely to cause security problems, 
particularly as right now the protocl aspect of XKMS is intermingled with 
the trust semantic bits. Regardless, HTTP clearly defines what these bits 
mean [1]; it predates XML and SOAP, xmldsig, and xenc all find namespaces 
sufficient [2].

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
3.1 HTTP Version
   HTTP uses a "<major>.<minor>" numbering scheme to indicate versions
   of the protocol. The protocol versioning policy is intended to allow
   the sender to indicate the format of a message and its capacity for
   understanding further HTTP communication, rather than the features
   obtained via that communication. No change is made to the version
   number for the addition of message components which do not affect
   communication behavior or which only add to extensible field values.
   The <minor> number is incremented when the changes made to the
   protocol add features which do not change the general message parsing
   algorithm, but which may add to the message semantics and imply
   additional capabilities of the sender. The <major> number is
   incremented when the format of a message within the protocol is
   changed.

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/#N535
4.1.2 Envelope Versioning Model

SOAP does not define a traditional versioning model based on major and 
minor version numbers. If a SOAP message is received by a SOAP 1.2 node in 
which the document element information item does NOT have a namespace name 
of http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope the SOAP node MUST treat this as 
a version error and generate a VersionMismatch SOAP fault (see 4.4 SOAP 
Fault). See A Version Transition From SOAP/1.1 to SOAP Version 1.2 for 
further details.

Any other malformation of the message structure MUST be treated as a Sender 
SOAP fault.


-- 

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 Tuesday, 5 March 2002 13:54:16 UTC