[XML-SIG] WSDL library ?

paul@boddie.net paul@boddie.net
14 Feb 2002 18:52:35 -0000


On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 10:40:36 -0800 Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> wrote:
>paul@boddie.net wrote:
>> 
>> When asked to investigate SOAP, one of the apparent advantages I found for
>> those who have already invested in XML data exchange representations is that
>> it seems to be possible to just drop the usual XML instances inside a SOAP
>> envelope and use largely the tools you already have to deconstruct those
>> instances later. 
>
>More or less. But there are lots of details you may have to worry about.
>Some of them your SOAP toolkit will handle, but others it will not. For
>instance if you have a hyperlink from one part of your document to
>another of the form xpath="/", should you rewrite it (the document's
>root element is no longer THE root element) before putting it in the
>SOAP message or not?

I think that this is really up to the application, and where you're just using 
SOAP to throw pieces of XML around, you're probably not going to want to access 
your piece of XML while it's inside the envelope. I've never done anything with 
SOAP, though. :-)

>SOAP doesn't really tell you. Heretical though it
>is, I'd say it is safer to NOT embed XML in SOAP. Either use separate
>MIME parts or use a protective level of encoding like base64.

Well, I could contradict myself immediately and say that one advantage is that 
you can access your XML inside the envelope. ;-)

>HTTP or SMTP or whatever provides the messaging infrastructure. SOAP
>provides...a secondary level of envelope?

I wonder if SOAP provides messaging semantics over and above HTTP or SMTP. I 
should try and find out more on messaging.

Paul

-- 
Get your firstname@lastname email at http://Nameplanet.com/?su