- From: Henrik Frystyk Nielsen <henrikn@microsoft.com>
- Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 18:53:34 -0700
- To: "Williams, Stuart" <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>, <xml-dist-app@w3.org>
Stuart, Obviously a lot of work has gone into this but I am not sure I agree with the stated purpose of a protocol binding: >The purpose of an XML Protocol Binding is to provide rules for >the transfer of XML Protocol messages over some specific >underlying protocol. The purpose of a binding architecture is >to provide an abstraction so that the core of the XML protocol >can be defined(specified) independently from the definition >(specification) of particular protocol bindings. IMO, it is not the role of the binding to provide rules for how messages are to be *transferred* by the underlying protocol. Such rules can either be provided by the underlying protocol itself or by some SOAP extension. As SOAP itself does not define any routing semantics, it can't really say much about how messages are to be exchanged or their exchange patterns for that matter. On the other hand, one of the things that I think the SOAP protocol binding should say is how to encapsulate a SOAP message given a specific underlying protocol. As an example one could describe how to stick a SOAP message within an HTTP message and how the two interact. It is also fine to talk informally about how protocol layering can be used to compose services and how these services may be used by SOAP. However for exactly the same reasons that the internals of a SOAP node is outside the scope of the SOAP specification, so I believe are the internals of the underlying protocol. Henrik Frystyk Nielsen mailto:henrikn@microsoft.com
Received on Wednesday, 4 July 2001 23:59:17 UTC