[whenToUseGet] PUT/POST & GET with SOAP

I've taken a look at the latest draft of:  "URIs, Addressability, and the
use of HTTP GET and POST".[1]  Overall, I think it's really excellent.  A
couple of suggestions:

* The "Ongoing work on GET in Web Services" section [2] has a good
reference to the SOAP support for RPC with GET, but you might also want to
link [3], which describes SOAP's WebMethod feature.  As you may be aware,
use of any flavor of RPC is optional in SOAP.  Various alternatives are
possible, and a "document" style is commonly employed.  The WebMethod
feature, which is supported by the normative SOAP HTTP binding[4], allows
get to be used with any type of SOAP traffic, whether RPC or not.  I expect
and hope that many non-RPC users of SOAP will avail themselves of the
opportunity to name resources with URIs, and to use get when appropriate.

* At several points the draft recommends using POST, but never PUT,
implying that perhaps use of PUT is always inappropriate.  As I suggested
in [4], there may be an opportunity to do some detailed and valuable
clarification on the PUT/POST distinction.  At the very least, it would
seem appropriate to indicate that PUT or POST should be used as
appropriate, perhaps just referring the reader back to RFC 2396 for
details?

Thank you.  BTW:  these are my personal comments, not sent on behalf of the
protocols WG.  Again, I think this is overall a terrific job!

Noah


[1] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html#webservices
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/PR-soap12-part2-20030507/#WebMethodFeature
[4] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2003May/0041.html

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Noah Mendelsohn                              Voice: 1-617-693-4036
IBM Corporation                                Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 22:54:08 UTC