Re: issue 168 proposal: xsi:type of external references in Encoding

 Jean-Jacques,
 again, what would you do with the following?
   <a id="1"    xsi:type="xsd:string"  >42</a>
   <b href="#1" enc:hrefType="xsd:ing"/>
 I'm opposed to enc:hrefType attribute because it puts typing
information on the accessor, whereas SOAP Encoding types values,
not accessors.

 I believe the current Encoding tries to comply to a
contradictory set of requirements using one mechanism:

 1) being able to share data and therefore enabling circular
graph structures,
 2) being able to point to anything out there,
 3) typing all values.

 We can remove the requirement 2) or 3), the former IMO results
in a cleaner and nicer beast. Or we can try other paths, like
adding other linking mechanism (like gref which was I think
proposed at the f2f), or like the following one that I just
thought about:
 "The href attribute can in fact point to anything at all and
it's the pointee's responsibility to provide it's type
information. (In case of XML, type can be gotten from a schema or
from the xsi:type attribute inf. item, in other cases by other
means.)"
 IMO this simple text, if present somewhere in the Encoding spec,
would close issue 168 (relying on third-party specifications or
implementors' practices for the "other cases" as SOAP does
already in places like ordering of header processing, for
example).

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Senior Architect, Systinet (formerly Idoox)
                   http://www.systinet.com/



On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Jean-Jacques Moreau wrote:

 > Congratulations for finding out what the "S" now stands for in "SOAP"! :)
 >
 > On a more serious note, I think Jacek was ruling this out in his proposal [1]
 > (ante-penultimate paragraph), the reason being it is "too complicated".
 >
 > Personnally, I would prefer us to say instead that "the type of the referenced
 > entity MAY be indicated by the enc:hrefType attribute".
 >
 > Jean-Jacques.
 >
 > [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Dec/0129.html
 >
 >
 > "John J. Barton" wrote:
 >
 > > At 07:48 PM 12/11/2001 -0500, Mark Baker wrote:
 > > >An enthusiastic +1
 > > >
 > > > > I agree and on a slightly more serious note, I would from a general Web
 > > > > architecture point of view suggest that we not go down this particular
 > > > > slippery slope.
 > >
 > > Somewhere in this thread I lost with whether or not
 > > my SOAP application would be able to predict the
 > > datatype of an external reference without accessing
 > > the resource.  I gather that the answer is "not through
 > > SOAP".  I can guess from the URL. I can make an extra
 > > element. But the system doesn't say.  Its Smalltalk,
 > > not Pascal.  (I'm ok with that, just unclear).
 > >
 > > ______________________________________________________
 > > John J. Barton          email:  John_Barton@hpl.hp.com
 > > http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/John_Barton/index.htm
 > > MS 1U-17  Hewlett-Packard Labs
 > > 1501 Page Mill Road              phone: (650)-236-2888
 > > Palo Alto CA  94304-1126         FAX:   (650)-857-5100
 >

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2001 10:13:50 UTC