Proposal for dealing with issue 200: SOAPAction header vs. action parameter

I took an action item to provide a proposal for dealing with issue 200
[1] so here goes.

Discussion
----------

The issue, which is brought [2] up by Mark Baker is fairly
self-explanatory but there seems to be four independent issues

1) Should we both have a SOAPAction header field *and* an
"application/soap+xml" media type "action" parameter?

2) Given the discussion of issue 197 [3], what happens if the media type
is *not* "application/xml+soap" (either directly or indirectly in some
nested manner)? 

3) We have a general issue with the dependency between the SOAP 1.2 spec
and the media type draft. I consider this an editorial issue but it
should be made clear.

4) Where can I find the resolution text for what SOAPAction header field
means?

Proposal
--------

1) I would say that we should only have it in one place and like the
direction of moving it entirely into the media type definition as a
parameter.

2) This is the trickiest part - one of the important reasons for having
a known content type is to indicate that *this* is a SOAP message. If
two parties are not using a known content type then that information
clearly is not there anymore. I can think of two ways to go:

2.A) We leave it entirely up to the media type being used to indicate in
some manner that this is a SOAP message.

2.B) We maintain the SOAPAction in some manner (for example in an
appendix) that allows is to be used with content types other than
"application/soap+xml" indicating that this is a SOAP message.

3) The spec editors should add a note to the spec that we know that this
is an ID with no standing.

4) This was carefully put together as the resolution [6] of issue 95
[5]. While some of the details regarding the status codes used will be
changed slightly as a result of it being a media-type parameter, and
that its value can't be relative, the overall resolution still stands.

Comments?

Henrik

[1] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues#x200
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2002Apr/0011.html
[3] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues#x197
[4]
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-baker-soap-media-reg-00.txt
[5] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-issues.html#x95
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Sep/0091.html

Received on Tuesday, 16 April 2002 12:13:37 UTC