Re: soap 1.0 a final standard???

At 07:33 AM 4/17/2003 -0400, Anne Thomas Manes wrote:

>Duane,
>
>Short answer:
>SOAP 1.0 has been superseded by SOAP 1.1. SOAP 1.1 is not a formal standard,
>and there is no effort in place to standardize SOAP 1.1. Even so, SOAP 1.1
>is the de facto standard. W3C is defining a standard XML protocol called
>SOAP 1.2. This effort used SOAP 1.1 as a starting point, but SOAP 1.2 is
>substantially different from SOAP 1.1.
>
>Long answer:
>
>SOAP 1.0 was written by Developmentor, Microsoft, and UserLand. In early
>2000, they recruited IBM and Lotus to join the fun, and they jointly
>produced SOAP 1.1. In May 2000, this spec was submitted [2] to W3C by the
>authors and some of their allies (Ariba, Commerce One, Compaq, HP, IONA, and
>SAP). W3C subsequently published SOAP 1.1 as a W3C Note [2]. A W3C Note is
>not an approved standard. From the status section of the specification:
>
>   "This document is a NOTE made available by the W3C for
>   discussion only. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates
>   no endorsement by W3C or the W3C Team, or any W3C Members.
>   W3C has had no editorial control over the preparation of
>   this Note. This document is a work in progress and may be
>   updated, replaced, or rendered obsolete by other documents
>   at any time."
>
>SOAP 1.1 is in it's final state -- it won't change. There is no effort to
>turn SOAP 1.1 into a formal standard. Instead, there is an effort going on
>to develop a new standard based on SOAP 1.1. This new standard is called
>SOAP 1.2.
>
>W3C formed the XML Protocol Working Group [3] in September 2000 to develop a
>formal SOAP standard. Three years after the initial publication of SOAP 1.1,
>the XML Protocol Working Group is very close to releasing the final SOAP 1.2
>standard. They published a Candidate Recommendation [4] in December. The
>final W3C Recommendation (W3C's name for a standard) should be published
>within the next two to three months. The SOAP Primer provides a section [5]
>that describes the differences between SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2. (Given the
>differences, I think it would have been more appropriate to call the new
>specification SOAP 2.0, but let's not go there.) Some vendors have added
>preliminary implementations of SOAP 1.2 [6], but these aren't product
>quality yet.
>
>Now, keep in mind that the IT world hasn't been sitting around twiddling its
>thumbs waiting for W3C to produce a standard. There are dozens of products
>out there [7] that implement SOAP 1.1. So even though it has no formal
>status as a standard, SOAP 1.1 is the current de facto standard for Web
>services. Challenges exist surrounding this specification, though. There are
>reasons why it's a good idea to put a specification through a rigorous
>standardization process. SOAP 1.1 has lots of ambiguous features, and these
>ambiguities result in interoperability issues. That's why the vendors
>started WS-I -- to help clarify the SOAP 1.1 spec, and to define a set of
>constraints and guidelines that make interoperability easier. The vendors
>are now working to ensure that their products support the WS-I Basic Profile
>[8].
>
>[1] http://www.w3.org/Submission/2000/05/
>[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP/
>[3] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/
>[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12-part1/
>[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-soap12-part0-20021219/#L4697
>[6] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/2/03/soap1.2implementation.html
>[7] http://www.soapware.org/directory/4/implementations
>[8] http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/Basic/2003-03/BasicProfile-1.0-BdAD.html
>
>Regards,
>Anne

wow!  thanks a million for the thorough analysis.

Duane Douglas
Computer Consultant
mailto:[email protected]