RE: Problem with resolution of Issue 221

The scenario described below (SOAP message formatted for presentation to
a client) seems attractive, but there is an aspect of it that I do not
understand: Would the server take into account the language local and
device characteristics of the user agent?  If not, how would the server
select the appropriate style sheet?  If so, however, why not just serve
HTML?  What am I overlooking?

-----Original Message-----
From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 9:33 AM
To: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com; asirv@webmethods.com
Cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
Subject: RE: Problem with resolution of Issue 221


At 11:02 AM -0400 9/3/02, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:

>(Finally, I can't help asking what I've asked before:  why is it in
>general interesting to do presentation stylings...which is the normal
>purpose of the XSL PI...on a SOAP message?  SOAP messages are generally
>machine-to-machine.  Whatever the other merits of the PI arguments,
>letting a SOAP message say "here's how to format me for the screen"
seems
>just slightly more interesting than letting an IP packet say the same
>thing.  Maybe I'm wrong and people really do want to send back browser
>screens as SOAP messages with XSL PI's, but it doesn't seem to be a
very
>important goal.   Also, it potentially breaks the mustUnderstand, node
>targeting and other processing that would make such use of SOAP
>interesting in the first place.)
>

Here's one scenario that I think is practical:

1. Server side developers use a SOAP toolkit to expose a local API. 
They are not coding the complete SOAP process by hand using DOM or 
some such. They are not working at the level of XML, at least for the 
most part. Thus, it is *not* trivial to write a separate process to 
expose the data as HTMl through a servlet, or a CGI, or a JSP.

2. Client side developers define an XForm that sends the request to 
the SOAP server, and receives the SOAP response. This allows end 
users to fill in the parameters of the SOAP request using a form, and 
get the result back. If the result contains an xml-stylesheet PI, 
then they can comfortably read the response.

Note that this may not be the only client for the SOAP service. There 
may well be other clients that do not involve an end-user. These 
clients can ignore the PI.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
|              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian2/              |
|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+

Received on Tuesday, 3 September 2002 14:11:08 UTC