Re: Web-friendly SOAP

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy this week.

Also apologies for the long initial quote but I want to establish
context:

Glen Daniels wrote:
> 
>....
> 
> 
> You have a description (WSDL) for a service you'd like to call.  It says something like this:
>    <operation name="getStockQuote" mep="http://w3.org/2002/request-response-mep">
>      ...
>    </operation>
>    ...
>    <binding name="1" type="http://w3.org/2002/soap-http-binding">
>    </binding>
>    <binding name="2" type="http://w3.org/2002/soap-UDP-binding">
>    </binding>
> 
> Your software knows that the "soap-http-binding" as specified in 
> SOAP 1.2 natively provides the "request-response-mep" feature.  
> Therefore, if you make a call using this binding, the response 
> is expected on the HTTP response stream, and life is good.  
> However, if you use the "soap-UDP-binding", we know (from the 
> binding spec) that the request-response feature is NOT natively 
> provided.  Your software, being the intelligent sort, has a SOAP 
> module kicking around called "simple-correlation" or somesuch, 
> which implements the request-response feature/mep with SOAP 
> headers.  So it can be smart enough to engage this module and 
> insert a header (probably with "mustUnderstand" set to "true") which 
> specifies a correlation ID and an endpoint URL, enabling the guy on 
> the server side, assuming he also has this module available, to get 
> you a response.  (clearly there are a few missing pieces in here, 
> this is just a quick overview)

Okay, let me propose an alternate scenario. I use a WSDL just as you
say. The one difference is that the binding I select is:

<binding name="1" type="http://w3.org/2002/http-binding">

i.e. I am using WSDL's HTTP binding rather than SOAP's. Wouldn't it make
sense that everything should still work? I should be able to (for
instance) use different MEPs and different features without using SOAP.
HTTP can, for example, use headers to add once-and-only once reliable
delivery. If this is the case then it seems that the concepts of
features, modules and bindings needs to be moved to the WSDL layer, not
the SOAP layer. Or duplicated in the WSDL layer in any case.

 Paul Prescod

Received on Monday, 24 June 2002 00:58:42 UTC