Re: Issue 146 proposed resolution

Mark Baker writes:

>> It's important that SOAP support a gateway model,
>> and in doing so, not attempt to prevent 
>> "processing the message" from including
>> delegation to other processors.

Agreed.   The question in my mind is, exactly how do we model it. As I 
understand Henrik, he is saying:  "there can be two nodes (and I mean 
"node" in exactly the formal sense of chapter 2) in the path taken by a 
given message both of which act in the role of the anonymous actor, 
neither of which is considered an intermediary;  nonetheless, the first 
one of these relays (again in the formal sense of "relay" per chapter 2) 
the message to the second.

I still find this very problematic.  The formulations for this use case I 
would prefer are your choice of:

a) From the point of view of the SOAP spec, there is a single endpoint 
node, which happens to have distributed logic, about which the SOAP spec 
says nothing.  You are always free to split your implementation in ways 
that the spec doesn't talk about, as long as you can identify the points 
in your system where conformant processing is done.

b) The first such node is the true endpoint, and from a chapter 2 point of 
view the message path ends there.  If you choose to generate what SOAP 
believes to be a separate but very similar looking message to the second 
node, that's your business.  The second node is the endpoint for that 
message.  The response, if any, to the second message can be used to 
construct the resposne to the first.  This can either be done privately to 
the implementations, or per the specification for some SOAP extension 
feature. 

c) (the one I like least, I think)  get rid of the distinction between 
intermediaries and endpoints.  Just say that there are nodes that play the 
role of the anonymous actor (and hence process the body) and those that 
don't.

Going to some trouble to distinguish intermediaries from endpoints, and 
then aving endpoints that act like intermediaries seems very strange to 
me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
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Received on Thursday, 15 November 2001 12:31:31 UTC