Re: SOAP intermediary - issue 70 (cont'd)

Jean-Jacques Moreau writes:

>> BTW, I do not think "forwarding" is a 
>> direct consequence of "processing". The
>> intermediary may decide not to process 
>> the message, and still do forwarding.

I don't think so.  The spec says you must assume the role of "next" if you 
are a node, including an intermediary node.  If there is a mustUnderstand 
to next you MUST process it.  Even doing those checks is "processing" in 
the terminology of chapter 2.  So, I think every SOAP node MUST process 
each message.  It is not necessarily required to assume any roles, other 
than next, that would result in its actually processing any particular 
headers, but it must at least follow the chapter 2 rules. 

One can imagine software that would do other useful things with SOAP 
messages, but such behavior is not covered by the SOAP spec, I think, just 
as HTTP doesn't explicitly say that you can buffer messages on disk if you 
like.  I don't think we should get into the business of nodes that don't 
process messages.  IMO, every node, including intermediaries,  should 
follow the rules in chapter 2, which is what it means to "process" a 
message.

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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 Tuesday, 16 October 2001 09:25:51 UTC