Re: Issue 107: Clarify the terms application, actor & related notions of identity.

On last weeks telcon I volunteered to rewrite sections 4.2.2 and 4.2.3
to address the agreed resolutions to issue 107 and to remove the overlap
between those sections and section 2 and it's subsections. Below is the
propsed new text, note that additional changes are due from Martin
Gudgin to address the requirement that actor and mustUnderstand
attributes must actually be present in the message rather than the
defaulted via a schema.

Comments ?

Marc.

---

4.2.2 SOAP actor Attribute

As described in section 2, not all parts of a SOAP message may be
intended for the ultimate SOAP receiver. SOAP defines an actor Attribute
Information Item that can be used to indicate the SOAP node at which a
particular SOAP header block is targeted.

The actor Attribute Information Item has:

     - A local name of actor 
     - A namespace name of http://www.w3.org/2001/06/soap-envelope 

The type of the Attribute Information Item is anyURI in the namespace
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema. The value of the Attribute Information
Item is a URI that names a role that a SOAP node may assume. 

The special URI "http://www.w3.org/2001/06/soap-envelope/actor/next"
indicates that the SOAP header block is intended for the very first SOAP
node that processes the message. This is similar to the hop-by-hop
scope model represented by the Connection header field in HTTP. Blocks
marked with this special actor URI are subject to the same processing
rules, outlined in section 2, as user defined URIs.

Omitting the SOAP actor Attribute Information Item implicitly targets
the SOAP header block at the ultimate SOAP receiver.

This Attribute Information Item has no default value.

4.2.3 SOAP mustUnderstand Attribute

As described in section 2.4, the SOAP mustUnderstand Attribute
Information Item is used to indicate whether the processing of a SOAP
header block is mandatory or optional at the target SOAP node. 

The mustUnderstand Attribute Information Item has:

     - A local name of mustUnderstand 
     - A namespace name of http://www.w3.org/2001/06/soap-envelope 

The type of the Attribute Information Item is boolean in the namespace
http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema. The default value is false.

The SOAP mustUnderstand Attribute Information Item allows for robust
extension of core SOAP. Element Information Items that have an SOAP
mustUnderstand Attribute Information Item with a value of "1" MUST
be presumed to somehow modify the semantics of their parent or peer
elements. This ensures that this change in semantics will not be
silently (and, presumably, erroneously) ignored by those who may not
fully
understand it.


--
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley@sun.com>
Tel: +44 1252 423740
Int: x23740

Received on Monday, 30 July 2001 10:12:18 UTC