What is an independent element

  I am a bit confused with the use of the term "independent element" in the
spec. Here are some usage of "independent element" in the spec.

*	 Section 5.1, the (first rule) rules for serialization says, "A
multi-reference value MUST be represented as the content of an independent
element".

*	Section 5.1, the terminology section ( bullet 11) says,
"Syntactically, an element may be independent or embedded. An independent
element is any element appearing at the top level of a serialization. 

*	Section 4.3.1, says "while both Header and Body are defined as
independent elements"

*	Section 4.3 says "All immediate child elements of the SOAP Body are
called SOAP body blocks and each SOAP body block is encoded as an
independent element within the SOAP body. "No" such statement exists for
SOAP Header blocks.

So, what is an independent element? 

*	To be an independent element should that be represented as a SOAP
Body block.
*	Or is an independent element at the same level as SOAP Header and
SOAP Body.
*	Or the notion of independent element is with respect to usage
context, where one could say, this "struct person" is an independent element
with in this SOAP Body block. 

I don't see any issue talking about this. So, I am not sure whether I am the
only one confused with this.

It seems to me that one possible reason behind the notion of independent
element may be to easily locate the "referred" element. If that is the
spirit behind it then it makes sense for an independent element to appear at
a fixed level. 

Comments?


Murali
PS:
I also noted this.

Section 5.1 , the 6th rule of serialization says, "Strings and byte arrays
are represented as multi-reference simple types, but special rules allow
them to be represented efficiently for common cases. 

Does this mean that strings and byte arrays though multi-referred can appear
as an embedded element?

Received on Tuesday, 24 July 2001 18:35:26 UTC