Supposing I've to extract the operation name from a SOAP Envelope I got into
my code, can I safely assume that for all styles and uses (doc-lit, rpc-enc)
the first child element of body has its localPart as the operation Name, or
are there any hitches in making that decision
You can assume this for rpc/encoded but not for document/literal. Basic
doc-lit sends and receives documents defined by schemata external to the web
service (i.e. XSD files included in the WSDL contract) and it doesn't require
an enclosing element named after the operation.
Right, and this is explicitly stated in the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0:
R2710 The operations in a wsdl:binding in a DESCRIPTION MUST result in
wire signatures that are different from one another.
The Profile defines the "wire signature" of an operation in a
wsdl:binding to be the fully qualified name of the child element of the
soap:Body of the SOAP input message it describes...In the case of
rpc-literal binding, the operation name is used as a wrapper for the part
accessors. In the document-literal case, since a wrapper with the operation
name is not present, the message signatures must be correctly designed so
that they meet this requirement.
I believe that's why Axis defines an <operation> element in the <service>
definition in server-config.wsdd:
<operation name="processEmployees" qname="ns1:processEmployees"
returnQName="ns1:processEmployeesReturn" returnType="xsd:int"
soapAction="" xmlns:ns1="http://www.ltree.com/types";
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema";>
<parameter qname="ns1:emps" type="ns1:Employee"/>
</operation>
The <operation> defines a mapping between the child element of the SOAP Body in
the request ("qname" attribute) to the method in the implementation class
("name" attribute). If the operation follows the wrapper-style convention, Axis
doesn't need the <operation> definition.
Mike
