RE: What is a SOAP Message

I believe that your counter example is still a representation.  It's simply
a representation of a request. Same way that form data encoded into a POST
is a representation of the form.

In my mind, the web is about exchanging messages.  In those messages are
representations and message metadata - and that representations consist of
representation data and metadata.  In typical web usage, the message
metadata and representation metadata are HTTP Headers.

Even RPC-style SOAP messages are representations (the allegedly "bad" SOAP
POST examples).  Therefore there is a direct and easily describable
relationship between SOAP and the Web.  Something like:
- SOAP Messages are Web Messages, with content-type soap+xml and related
processing model.  Separately, this is an additional constraint upon the web
architecture.  Probably some motivation about what properties are achieved
by this would be helpful in the ws-arch document.
- SOAP Messages contain representations.  Where I get a little fuzzy is the
relationship of the envelope to the representation.  It seems to me that a
SOAP representation is an envelope + some stuff outside the envelope.
Indeed the content-type defines more than just the envelope.

The point being, the SOAP architecture fits very well into the web
architecture, once one clearly defines the relationship between these terms.

Cheers,
Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: xml-dist-app-request@w3.org
> [mailto:xml-dist-app-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Mark Baker
> Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 8:39 PM
> To: David Orchard
> Cc: xml-dist-app@w3.org
> Subject: Re: What is a SOAP Message
>
>
>
> +1 to Noah's last message, but I also wanted to respond to Dave's
> questions ...
>
> On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:08:09PM -0800, David Orchard wrote:
> > woah, that seems a bit extreme.
> >
> > Does that mean if I have a method in an HTML form - like
> GetStockQuote :-) -
> > that the HTML result isn't a representation as well?
>
> No, response messages of any kind are almost always representations,
> independant of the form of request message.
>
> - getStockQuote("SUNW") returns a representation
> - GET /foo returns a representation
>
> As an example of what it means to return a non-representation, imagine
> sending a request, and getting a response that was really another
> request that the protocol said you had to treat as a request, not just
> opaque data.
>
> > So dereferencing URIs can result in representations and
> non-representations?
>
> Just representations.
>
> MB
> --
> Mark Baker.   Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.        http://www.markbaker.ca
> Web architecture consulting, technical reports, evaluation & analysis
>

Received on Monday, 10 February 2003 18:25:24 UTC