Re: 4506 Addendum: HTTP Accept Header Value

Mark,

Thanks for your comment regarding the revised resolution of issue 4506. I 
have opened an issue [1] to reflect
your comment. The WG discused this on the call yesterday and concluded 
that we would close with no
further action.

Here is the text of the issue resolution:

WG resolved to open and close with no action. The WG felt that while 
Mark's
point was possibly technically correct absent the context of the MTOM 
Policy
assertion that using the application/xop+xml media type did not in fact
represent an endpoint's ability to support MTOM, but rather the XOP media 
type,
which is not what the MTOM policy assertion is about. The WG also noted 
that in
fact the multipart/related; type=application/xop+xml did not technically
represent support for MTOM, but could, in fact, represent another 
serialization
of a multipart message that had, as its root body, an application/xop+xml
serialized entity. However, in the context of use of the MTOM policy 
assertion,
one could reasonably infer that it meant support for MTOM if the receiving
endpoint of the ACCEPT header had exposed a policy that included the MTOM
policy assertion.

We hope you are ok with the WG's response.

Cheers,

[1] http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4885

Christopher Ferris
STSM, Software Group Standards Strategy
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/chrisferris
phone: +1 508 234 2986

xml-dist-app-request@w3.org wrote on 07/11/2007 11:01:22 PM:

> 
> On 7/11/07, Pete Wenzel <pete.wenzel@sun.com> wrote:
> >
> > The 6/27 minutes at
> > http://www.w3.org/2007/06/27-xmlprotocol-minutes.html
> > show that the WG agreed to the following text proposed by Anish:
> >
> >   "For example, when using SOAP/HTTP binding, the 'Accept' HTTP header
> >   value of 'application/xop+xml' in the request message indicates that
> >   the response may be sent using MTOM encoding."
> >
> > When this had been discussed previously, I expressed concern, because
> > the outermost wrapper is, of course, the multipart/related media type,
> > not application/xop+xml.  Fortunately, the HTTP Accept header allows
> > parameter qualifications, so a value of
> >
> >   multipart/related; type=application/xop+xml
> >
> > should accurately express what is intended.
> 
> It seems to me that you'd want both, no?  I'm assuming that
> application/xop+xml can be used independently of the multipart MIME
> solution.
> 
> Mark.
> -- 
> Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.         http://www.markbaker.ca
> Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies  http://www.coactus.com
>