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Re: SOAP and the Web

• To: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>
• Subject: Re: SOAP and the Web
• From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
• Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 11:23:49 +0100
• Cc: xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• References: <2C61CCE8A870D211A523080009B94E430752B3C9@HQ5> <3CD01C16.80606@r...> <3CD06157.11DC0617@p...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020311

Paul Prescod wrote:

>You won't make much progress if you think of it as message "requests"
>and "responses". Think of it as resources with representations and
>addresses. Can the representations be XML? Yes. Can you send AND receive
>representations? Yes. Can addresses be XML? No, not easily. But if you
>think of them as addresses, then it becomes less interesting to pack
>information into them as if they were messages. Pop up a level and
>figure out what you are trying to do, what you want to be addressable
>and what you want to be the representation.
>
I know I have a bit of a blind-spot here. What is the canonical example 
of a "resource" v. a "representation"? Say I wanted to look up trains 
from London to North Berwick - is the URL of the query a representation 
of the timetable resource? That seems simple enough, but what is the 
representation that I send - one representation of the train route from 
London to North Berwick, or a combination of representations for the 
locations of London and North Berwick?

I like the way that W3C specs come with "this version" and "latest 
version" links at the top, and I find it frustrasting that I can't refer 
to resources in Visual SourceSafe in the same way, so I think I'm making 
progress...

>>For those of us who get excited about sending and receiving schema-valid
>>XML messages this is a bit frustrating.
>>
>
>The good news is that manipulating representations of resources is *even
>more exciting* than sending schema-valid XML messages.
>
But are they mutually exclusive? And if so, technically or cognitively?

>>...
>>having schema-valid GET parameters could make the web even more open -
>>if my train timetable query uses a schema which enumerates all valid
>>stations for the toStation and fromStation attributes, then a smart
>>browser, maybe using an XForms plugin, would help me build my query, but
>>I would still be able to embed or link to the resulting GET.
>>
>
>XForms *does* have GET support.
>
Can XForms understand GET or POST Web Services described in WSDL? I 
imagine WSDL is a bit short on form layout details, but does XForms have 
helpful deaults?

Francis.

• Follow-Ups:
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• References:
  • RE: SOAP and the Web
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Francis Norton <francis@r...>
  • Re: SOAP and the Web
    • From: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>

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