Re: Fault code .extension mechanism

Jacek,

I agree with your issues. I like the idea of fault code extensibility, 
but I don't like the current way of doing it in SOAP.

What I would like to have in SOAP is some sort of hierarchy of fault 
codes which can be specified in an XML way.
One way of doing it would be to allow the faultcode element to contain 
another faultcode element to give more precise information about it.
In this way, we could have:
<faultcode>
	Client
	<faultcode>
		Authentication
	</faultcode>
</faultcode>

or even:
<faultcode>
	Client
	<faultcode>
		Authentication
		<faultcode>
			Expired
		</faultcode>
	</faultcode>
</faultcode>

This would allow an application to find easily the most precise 
faultcode it understand.

Hervé.

Jacek Kopecky wrote:

>  Hello. 8-)
> 
>  In SOAP, fault codes are defined to be qualified names. The
> specification lists four predefined codes. Then it also adds that
> the fault codes are extensible by separating more and less
> general identifiers with a dot character.
> 
>  I have a couple of issues with this approach to extensibility.
> 
>  1) from the XML viewpoint Client and Client.Authentication are
> completely different identifiers. From an XML perspective it is
> impossible to say that "Client.Authentication" is still a "Client"
> fault.
> 
>  2a) The specification seems to say that these extended identifiers
> will still be in the SOAP envelope namespace. Does this mean that
> anybody can arbitrarily extend the W3C SOAP envelope namespace?
> 
>  2b) If the new, extended fault codes are to be in a different
> namespace, there is again no way to know that
> {some-namespace}Client.Authentication is actually also a
> {soap-envelope-namespace}Client fault.
> 
>  3) There already is a <detail> element in the fault which might
> be a good place to put the detail information into.
> 
> I think W3C specs should leverage what XML already provides (like
> qnames and hierarchical data) and minimize parsing that must be
> done above what XML processor does. This comment is actually also
> valid on the SOAP encoding array attributes. 8-)
> 
>                             Jacek Kopecky
> 
>                             Idoox
>                             http://www.idoox.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2001 09:31:06 UTC