RE: Section 5 vs Schema

Me too...any examples showing particular programming languages should be in
the primer, if at all.

W3C Schema plays a distinguished role in SOAP, and should be discussed
normatively.   I suggest this not because it is technically superior to
other schema languages, or because its use is mandated by SOAP (it mostly
isn't) but because:

a) schema is part of the W3C family of recommendations, so we have an
obligation to show how protocols works with schema
b) SOAP does formally mandate use of a few features of W3C  XML Schema.
Specifically, it adopts built-in simple types such as xsd:integer, and
provides a SOAP-specific interpretation of xsi:type that applies even when
schema validation is not performed.

So, I suggest we need to show normatively which aspects of schema are
mandatory in all SOAP implementations (you can't change the rules for what
xsi:type="xsd:integer" means), and which are not.  We need to clarify
whether an element that says

     <A xsi:type="xsd:integer" >12XYZ34</A>

is ever OK, and if not what the fault is and whether it MAY, MUST or SHOULD
be triggered.   Does the answer depend on whether we're using the "chapter
5" encodings?  I think this must at least be discussed, but I'm not making
a strong recommendation as to the answer...we probably can follow the
precendent we just set for unresolved ID/IDREFs.)

If we want to show how SOAP is used independent of W3C schema, we can show
examples where no schema is presumed to exist, or we can present examples
that presume the existence of a schema in some other hypothetical langauge,
asserting certain constraints on the envelope.   I would NOT use some
particular known schema language such as schematron or Trex; I would just
say "assume that a schema in some language constrains the <addresss>
element to be non-empty", or some such.

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Noah Mendelsohn                              Voice: 1-617-693-4036
IBM Corporation                                Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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Received on Friday, 25 January 2002 20:32:07 UTC