It's a rumour. RE: ebXML Abandons SOAP

"ebXML abandons SOAP" is a rumour. A more accurate description is as
follows:

1. ebXML has not abandoned SOAP, but we haven't adopted it either - I
personally, and other people in ebXML, see the W3C XP activity as a
potential path of convergence between SOAP and ebXML
2. On MIME, we selected MIME rather than XML because, **right now** (notice
the emphasis) it is the only **standard** (notice the emphasis again) way to
digitally sign and encrypt documents, and
3. We wanted to have one way of encapsulating/wrapping/enveloping electronic
data whether it was XML or not.

Let's not pre-judge any outcomes of the XP work before the first XP meeting
has even been held.

David Burdett (editor ebXML Transport Routing & Packaging)

-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt Cagle [mailto:cagle@olywa.net]
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 1:38 PM
To: xml-dist-app@w3.org
Subject: Re: ebXML Abandons SOAP


XML is adequate for containing XML, although namespaces can get to be
something of a pain. XML is even pretty good at containing non-XML
information, such as MIME encodings, which is the whole reason behind the
CDATA section in the first place (though I personally would like to see a
mechanism within XML that would allow you to specify the enclosing
delimiters of a CDATA section).

SOAP is, for all that it is pushed as a messaging mechanism, is essentially
a way of performing RPCs,  and most of it's purpose is to distinguish
between valid response data and fault information. The payload is in many
respects very secondary to the SOAP enveloping. SOAP is also important for
handling routing, since the SOAP headers can include port and processing
information. Finally SOAP acts to maintain security and ACL information,
although this is a function more of implementation than specification.

Thus, for MIME-XML to accomplish the same thing, it would need to include
those primary attributes. I also find MIME a dubious choice for messaging in
the distributed application context, since it works upon the HTTP paradigm
but not really the XML paradigm if object containment. Like Simon, I'm not a
big fan of SOAP, but I like the thought of a MIME-XML standard even less.

-- Kurt Cagle





----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack, Adam" <AJack@neonsoft.com>
To: <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 1:05 PM
Subject: RE: ebXML Abandons SOAP


>
> At 01:42 PM 10/2/00 -0600, Jack, Adam wrote:
> >Maybe XML addressing/routing/context information with separate (not
> >contained inside the XML) MIME bodyparts is the way to go....
>
> I hate to start a food fight, but I have to admit that I have a
> _very_ hard time trying to figure out why anyone would want to preserve,
> extend, or encourage MIME multipart transfers for XML.
>
> Be it MIME or something else, that isn't the issue. [MIME is just a likely
> candidate 'cos it's proved useful (in both e-mail and HTTP) and is well
> known.]  That said --- I would like to see "an XML protocol" (I am not
> trying to start a MIME fan club. ;-)
>
> The issue is simply that XML itself [and hence SOAP] is sadly lacking in
> shipping XML inside.
>
> regards
>
> Adam
>
>

Received on Monday, 2 October 2000 17:11:31 UTC