Possible ambiguity regarding non-RPC responses in HTTP

The wg chair has asked me to send this email, to remind the group to
consider a possible issue.

Soap 1.2 says [1] :

"SOAP naturally follows the HTTP request/response message model by
providing a SOAP request message in a HTTP request and SOAP response
message in a HTTP response"

The only formally defined notion of "Response" in the remainder of the spec
is in chapter 7, and is specific to method-style RPC.

So, there is a potential ambiguity as to whether the HTTP binding, as
written, allows non-RPC responses to be sent as HTTP responses.  This
should, perhaps, be tracked as an issue.

I will note that my personal preference would be to introduce a simple but
somewhat more clearly architected notion of message exchange patterns, with
the spec providing specific definitions for one-way and request-response,
including any implications for fault handling, etc.   Should that prove too
ambitious, we might want to at least clarify the http binding.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-soap12-20010709/#_Toc478383526

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
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Received on Thursday, 2 August 2001 18:29:33 UTC