RE: CR148 analysis

Dear XMLP WG,

Would you care to comment on this issue?  This is a case where we have a
"feature" with implementation support and obvious utility, yet it's not
clear whether it is in line with the intention of the SOAP Response MEP and
it's HTTP binding.

http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/5/cr-issues/#CR148

Jonathan Marsh - http://www.wso2.com - http://auburnmarshes.spaces.live.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of Jacek Kopecky
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 10:42 AM
> To: WS-Description WG
> Subject: CR148 analysis
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> it seems that in CR148, Canon and Axis2 have agreed to send
> content-type: application/soap+xml; action='...'
> in the GET request if using SOAP response MEP.
> 
> I note that according to the HTTP RFC [1], content-type is an
> entity-header which appears with an entity body, or in the reply to HEAD
> where there is no entity body. GET requests don't transfer an entity,
> therefore they also don't have any entity headers.
> 
> Additionally, the SOAP-Response MEP spec [2] says it is "a pattern for
> the exchange of a non-SOAP message acting as a request followed by a
> SOAP message acting as a response". I expect that a non-SOAP message
> should not be marked as application/soap+xml. There's a note just before
> 6.3.3 in the SOAP adjuncts that says "this MEP cannot be used in
> conjunction with features expressed as SOAP header blocks in the request
> because there is no SOAP envelope in which to carry them." I assume a
> similar intent also applies to the SOAP Action feature which is
> expressed as a parameter of the SOAP media type.
> 
> While the behavior of the two implementations may not be harmful,
> I would say, from the two specs involved, that it's against the
> intention, even if I couldn't find a concrete MUST NOT there.
> 
> I would suggest that our spec should be clarified to say that the {soap
> action} property is only used by messages that are, in fact, SOAP
> messages.
> 
> Hope it helps,
> Jacek
> 
> [1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part2/#soapresmep