SOAP Representation Header 28 April WD

This spec needs more explicit statement of some use cases, and this is 
causing some confusion expressed in various weblogs and on the TAG 
mailing list.  For example, some are calling it "tunneling HTTP over 
SOAP over HTTP".  There would be no need for a Representation Header in 
an open HTTP environment where the recipient could dereference any 
links in a SOAP message, but this (perhaps overwhelmingly obvious) 
point is not made anywhere in the spec.

Some use cases that come to mind (based on my hazy recollection of 
discussions when I was on the XMLP WG) would be:

- A SOAP message that references Web resources needed to process it is 
received by an HTTP gateway and then passed over a proprietary 
messaging system (e.g. MQ) to a system that is not on the Web.

-- A SOAP message that references Web resources needed to process it  
is received by the DMZ outside a high-security environment.  All 
arbitrary Web links must be dereferenced and vetted outsize the 
high-security environment and passed inside for processing.

- - A SOAP message that references Web resources needed to process it 
is received by a performance-critical system; tasks that can be easily 
parallelized (such as HTTP GETs on the links) are done simultaneously, 
and the results combined and passed downstream to a process that must 
consider them all.

Do these make sense, or am I also missing the point here?

Received on Sunday, 2 May 2004 10:59:56 UTC