Re: SOAP concerns

Chris Ferris writes:

>> SOAP doesn't mandate what can go in the SOAP Body at all.

Actually that's not quite true.  It requires that the child of a header 
body be namespace qualified [1].  That's crucial, because the SOAP 
processing model mandates that you only process header or body entries for 
which you "understand" the corresponding specification.  The spec makes 
clear that such "understanding" is indeed keyed to the namespace-qualified 
name of those child elements [2]:

"A SOAP header block is said to be understood by a SOAP node if the 
software at that SOAP node has been written to fully conform to and 
implement the semantics conveyed by the combination of local name and 
namespace name of the outer-most element information item of that block."

Those mechanisms apply uniformly whether the content is RPC [3] or not. 
So, not only does SOAP say something about what goes into headers and 
body, I think the answer is key to dealing with some of Roger's concerns.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part1-20011002/#soaphead
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part1-20011002/#muprocessing
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-part2-20011002/#soapforrpc

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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 Friday, 12 October 2001 10:20:00 UTC