Re: why no doc type declaration and PIs in SOAP?

Jacek writes:

>> I respectfully disagree, we should keep it 
>> at MUST NOT include DTD or PIs.

+1.  SHOULD NOTs are an invitation to interop problems.  Yes, there are 
occasions where SHOULD NOT is an agreeable tradeoff -- I don't think this 
is one.  If people start deploying processors that act on, for example, 
entities defined in an internal DTD subset carried with the message, my 
customers will expect my products to understand those messages.   Yes, 
there can be situations in which it would be convenient to use some 
existing XML processor that just swallows DTD's and acts on them.  I think 
the interop concerns outweigh that convenience.  As a mentioned in my 
earlier note, I really think that SOAP in particular will be run in a 
performance regime that stretches what we're used to with XML.  We should 
be very reluctant to tack on seemingly small features that collectively 
complicate the processing model.  XML itself already has two strikes 
against it in competing with truly high performance messaging technologies 
of the sort we are hoping to displace.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Friday, 21 September 2001 11:45:19 UTC