- From: Williams, Stuart <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 16:15:45 +0100
- To: "'Henrik Frystyk Nielsen'" <henrikn@microsoft.com>, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>
- Cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
> >>It would be interesting to hear. My intuition (and experience, FWIW) > >>is that applications will be designed to take advantage of the most > >> appropriate transport, and specify which binding is in use. > > I absolutely agree with this. > > >So is SOAP really a protocol or is it yet another > >packaging/encapsulation format? > > ...as opposed to yet another protocol ;? Protocols are used for all kind > of purposes and exhibit all kind of properties and diving into what > constitutes a protocol and how they can be classified is nothing less > than a PhD subject. An indeed I'm sure many good PhD's have been awarded to people who have taken up this challenge :-) > The discussion that we have had about the SOAP processing model will > tell you that there is more than merely a wrapper - there is in fact a > processing model that defines how to deal properly with SOAP messages > and when to generate faults. Certainly we have an imperative processing model for SOAP which tells us what to do when handling a SOAP envelope and when to generate faults. > It is true that SOAP by itself doesn't define many of the application > layer characteristics that most other application protocols exhibit such > as message exchange patterns, routing, correlation, etc. The reason > being that I think we believe we have a good extensibility mechanism > that allows us to add such features. Time will tell whether this is a > valid assumption. It might be good to test that assumption by creating a couple of really useful extension modules... anyone fancy a crack at a multi-hop reliable sequenced delivery (in spare non-WG time of course). > Henrik regards Stuart
Received on Monday, 9 July 2001 11:16:01 UTC