----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 12:34 PM Subject: Re: Clients using GET and POST
> Hi Andrew and Sudhir: > > Reading through this thread, I think there's a bit of confusion (it could be > mine of course). > I don't believe that it is true that all web service requests and responses > must be sent in SOAP. SOAP based web services must use SOAP; REST can use anything it wants for params,but XML is usually the return content of either. > When the WSDL 1.1 spec talks about HTTP GET/POST > bindings, I don't think it is talking about SOAP at all. no it isnt. WSDL does not need soap; SOAP does not need WSDL. But SOAP is much better with discovery; WSDL provides that. >I've read at least > one article lately that talks about how SOAP is a big waste of bandwidth, > and that argues that web service requests should be sent as URLs (with > arguments inline) and responses as SOAP-free XML documents in an HTTP > response. I think it was over on the O'Reilly XML website (www.xml.com). if you are worried about bandwidth, dont use XML, use binary marshalling. But the article has a point; if you use GET requests you reduce your upload bandwidth and dont need a parser at the far end. But the consequence is that you cant send complex stuff up, not without POSTing > > If you use MS.Net to produce a simple web service that just returns a hello > world string, you'll see that the HTTP GET/POST response message is not a > SOAP message at all -- it is simply an xml document with an element > containing the string (there is no SOAP envelope). > > So using HTTP GET, with your web service request data in the URL header, or > POST with them in the message body, and getting back the response as a > SOAP-free HTTP message is probably not just MS showing off, and I doubt the > intention was just for easy testing. it is probably for easier connectivity with non-SOAP callers, but there are a lot of things you just cant ask for in get based requests > > I believe it is orthogonal to SOAP. exactly
