Re: [whenToUseGet] PUT/POST & GET with SOAP

On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 22:44, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 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.  

Thank you, Noah. It's really starting to represent a bunch of input from
the community! 

> 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.

The reference is helpful, thank you. 

I am going to go out on a limb and ask whether you could draft a few
sentences to be included.

> * 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?

Yes, that seems appropriate to avoid a misunderstanding; this finding
is limited in scope to discussion of GET and POST (and HEAD a little).

I am following the discussion of PUT to monitor whether there is
an architectural issue that needs discusion in the mime type
finding, in a separate finding, or simply in the architecture document.
I've not yet understood what the architectural issue is, or whether
RFC 2616 requires clarification for the scenario at the beginning
of the thread: what to do when no header sent by the client to the
server. 

> 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!

Thank you,

 _ Ian

> 
> 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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Noah Mendelsohn                              Voice: 1-617-693-4036
> IBM Corporation                                Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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-- 
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447

Received on Tuesday, 13 May 2003 00:15:48 UTC