Re: Issue 4 Proposed Resolution (was: why no doc type declaration and PIs in SOAP)

Paul Denning wrote:
> At 11:35 AM 2001-09-28, Marc Hadley wrote:
> 
>> All,
>>
>> As the custodian of issue 4 I'd like to propose the following 
>> resolution and rationale.
>>
>> Proposed Resolution:
>>
>> A SOAP message MUST NOT contain a Document Type Declaration or 
>> Processing Instructions. On receipt of a SOAP message containing a 
>> Document Type Declaration or Processing Instruction a SOAP receiver 
>> MUST either ignore it or generate a fault (see 4.4 SOAP Fault) with 
>> faultcode of "Client.DTD" or "Client.PI" respectively.
> 
> 
> Please clarify what you mean by "ignore it".
>
A fair point, what I meant was that the processor should ignore the PI 
or DTD and still process the message OR generate a fault. How about the 
following wording to clarify the interpretation:

"A SOAP message MUST NOT contain a Document Type Declaration (DTD) or
Processing Instructions (PI). On receipt of a SOAP message containing a
DTD or PI a SOAP receiver MUST either ignore the DTD or PI or generate a 
fault (see 4.4 SOAP Fault) with faultcode of "Client.DTD" or "Client.PI" 
respectively."

> I assume stop processing the entire message because, as Bob Hutchison 
> points out, it does not seem correct to process something that violates 
> a MUST NOT contain.
> 
No, the reason for allowing a processor to process a (non compliant) 
message by ignoring DTDs and PIs is to remove the burden on the 
receiving processor of having to explicitly check for things that the 
spec says MUST NOT be there in the first place. If we don't allow this 
then every processor will have to include checks for DTDs and PIs even 
if they are unable to deal with them anyway - it was felt at the F2F 
that this was an unnecessary burden on simple processors.


Regards,
Marc.

-- 
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley@sun.com>
XML Technology Centre, Sun Microsystems.

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 04:55:18 UTC