Re: Issue #12 proposed resolution

Hi Chris,

Two issues for you.

> As agreed on the call, I have removed reference to 201, 203, 205 and
> 206. I have also changed the SHALL to a MAY in regards to 405 and
> I have modified 500 to reflect its use for cases other than those described
> in section 6.3.2 (4xx Client).

Issue 1;

I'm quite curious to hear why the references to those other response
codes were removed.  Is it because you felt that only these response codes
needed an additional explanation in the context of their use with SOAP?
If so, I can buy that, but I'd suggest that 202, 405, and 415 don't need
that explanation (no biggie though).

It's good that there's no mention in your proposal of disallowing other
status codes, but as with 3xx, I'd suggest that explicitly stating that
fact would be useful to implementors.  That's my main concern here really -
that developers don't assume that other status codes can't be used.

Issue 2;

In my original proposal[1], I had a footnote;

"(*) I would normally suggest that using the specific 5xx or 4xx status
codes (rather than 400 and 500) should be used, but as SOAP is trying to
be application-protocol neutral, I can understand its desire not to."

I believe it's still important for SOAP developers that they *not* be
forced into specifying an HTTP response code.  I therefore think it's
important that a default response code be defined for each type of SOAP
fault.  I was imagining that the code would look something like this;

   SoapFault f = new SoapFault( SoapFault.CLIENT_FAULT, "you did \
     something wrong" );
   // f.statusCode initialized to 400 above, but hidden from developer
   soapConnection.setResponse( f );

and that this could be used by the majority of developers, and would
return a 400 (client fault) status code.  Alternately, developers
requiring specifying more fine grained response codes could do this;

   SoapFault f = new SoapFault( 405, "don't know how to do that" );
   soapConnection.setResponse( f );

In [1], I'm suggesting what that *default* fault response codes should
be.  Obviously the default for a good SOAP response should be 200, but
using a mechanism similar to what's above, developers should be able to
specify more fine grained 2xx response codes.

 [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Jun/0017.html

MB

Received on Saturday, 29 September 2001 02:41:11 UTC