- From: <Noah_Mendelsohn@lotus.com>
- Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 13:45:22 -0400
- To: "Jones, Matthew" <MJones@NetSilicon.com>
- Cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
I think you've made a number of asssumptions that perhaps underly your concerns. A few comments: 1) SOAP doesn't tell you who will do the XML parsing. Many general purpose SOAP implementations will provide integrated parsing of both body and header entries as appropriate to assist the application or other middleware. 2) Header entries serve at least two related purpose. First, even between just a pair of nodes, they are a very general extensibility mechanism. Note particularly the importance of "mustUnderstand". Although simple in concept, it is a powerful building block for ensuring that two parties that may not have detailed knowledge of each others' software (this is >web< services after all) can indeed safely communicate. Also: in situations where a message is expected to traverse multiple nodes (e.g. stopping at a cache manager), header entries give you a way to address information to the intermediaries (e.g. don't cache this.) Hope this helps. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Noah Mendelsohn Voice: 1-617-693-4036 Lotus Development Corp. Fax: 1-617-693-8676 One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Tuesday, 25 September 2001 13:53:21 UTC