Re: SOAP Encoding - Arrays

Thanks Don,

One of the recent discussions has been over splitting the type and
conformance information into two attributes [I'm not sure what the
status on this is, it doesn't appear to be in the current draft].

Given that and the fact that Schema's have stabilized, is it possible
to remove the requirement to specify the array item types in the
array, by using the "arrays must be of type soap-enc:Array or derived
from soap-enc:Array" [which i believe is already in the text]. This
allows you to push the metadata about the array into the schema and
out of the wire rep, but still use xsi:type for polymorphic arrays.
e.g.
// schema defines array to be of type ns:arrayOfInt
<array enc:arraySize="10" enc:offset="5">
	<item>25</item>
	<item>35</item>
</array>

// schema defines array to be of type enc:Array
<array xsi:type="ns:arrayOfInt" enc:arraySize="2">
	<item>10</item>
	<item>20</item>
</array>

Where arrayOfInt is a type derived from soap-enc array, as described
in the WSDL spec. This allows arrays to be treated in a manner consist
with all the other type types that are part of the encoding spec.

Thanks
Simon
www.pocketsoap.com

On Thu, 31 Jan 2002 12:55:18 -0800, in soap you wrote:

>The reason for the SOAP:array attribute was two fold:
>
>1) We wanted the conformance (capacity) of the array to appear in the
>initial element. This is super important for supporting both Java/CLR
>and for NDR/CDR efficiently.
>
>2) We wanted the equivalent of xsi:type but with support for arrays (and
>arguably typed references). Unfortunately, SOAP/1.1 and earlier were
>written during a period of immense churn over in Schemas, so SOAP/1.1
>never had a chance to really finish this off. 
>
>DB
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Simon Fell [mailto:soap@zaks.demon.co.uk]
>> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 11:09 AM
>> To: xml-dist-app@w3.org
>> Subject: SOAP Encoding - Arrays
>> 
>> One thing i've never fully understood is why arrays are special when
>> it comes to type information, why must we include the type of the
>> array elements in the message, when for all other types, its contained
>> in external metadata (schema, etc).
>> 
>> Thanks
>> Simon
>> www.pocketsoap.com

Received on Thursday, 31 January 2002 16:25:58 UTC