RE: Issue 146 proposed resolution

Henrik Frystyk Nielsen writes:

>> All three parties are SOAP nodes, it is just that 
>> the way the front-end has decided to process the 
>> message is to forward the message
>> to the back-end server

This seems problematic to me, because it doesn't seem to match the rules 
we've set for what it means to act in a role.  We say very clearly in 
chapter 2 that, if you act in the anonymous role, you MUST process bodies, 
and we strongly imply that you are the endpoint (as opposed to an 
intermediary.)  If, in your example, there are two nodes acting as the 
anonymous actor, then surely both must "process" the body, or else the 
first one must strip it.  Processing the body means obeying the spec for 
its root QName, which might be for example to get a stock quote. 

By all means, you should be able to do distributed implementations of a 
SOAP node, endpoint or otherwise.  To say that the endpoint is potentially 
more than one SOAP node in the same path seems to raise lots of messy 
questions. 

If you really want to have processing that comes after the node that 
"does" the body, then maybe we should get rid of the notion of endpoint 
being tied to the anonymous actor.  That would leave us with: 

"The body is targeted to the anonymous actor;  any node serving in that 
role MUST process the body".  Such a node can come at any point in the 
message path, and may be an intermediary that relays the message for 
further header processing, or MAY reinsert the body element for 
reprocessing.   The endpoint of a given message path is not determined by 
the core soap specifications;  implementations are free to terminate 
routing, generate responses, etc. in any manner consistent with the 
specifications for the headers and bodies in a message..  Features and 
MEP's can be created that do constrain the routing of messages, the 
relaying of messages, and the generation of dependent messages such as 
responses."

Is that where you want to head?   Thanks.

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Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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Received on Wednesday, 14 November 2001 20:08:26 UTC