Section 5 vs Schema

SOAP 1.2 Part 2 Section 4[1] ( old section 5 ) defines a set of encoding
rules for mapping from programmatic type systems to XML.

There was some discussion on the last editors conference about how to deal
with issue 17[2] regarding the schemas that appear in section 5. I took an
action to start discussion about this on this list. Please note I will be on
holiday from today and will not be back until the New Year so will not be
able to actively participate until then, hopefully you'll all have nailed
the issue by then!

One suggestion was that section 5 actually defines an implicit schema so
each mapping from some programmatic type essentially defines a schema type.
This seems reasonable but at the same time feels a little odd. We have
section 5 because when SOAP 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1 were written XML Schema was not
done, we didn't have an XML based type system. So we had to start from a
type system we did have. So Section 5 defines a set of rules for mapping
from programmatic type systems iuntNow that XML Schema is done it is
possible to define the messages being exchanged entirely in XML Schema
without reference to any programmatic type system. Mapping to the
programmatic type system ( if any ) at either end of the exchange is an
implementation detail.

So, given that we have XML Schema, does it make sense to infer a schema from
some other type system?

And if it does, what do we do about examples in the spec. It seems very
strange to say 'we start from a programmatic type system' and then only show
schemas! We are defining a language binding, even if we never show a Java
class or a C struct or whatever.

OK, that's it. I hope the discussion is fruitful, I'll read through it when
I get back from holiday.

Regards

Martin Gudgin
DevelopMentor



[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part2-20011002/#soapenc
[2] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues.html#x17

Received on Monday, 3 December 2001 12:58:29 UTC