Reference [1] in draft-etal-beep-soap-04.txt is written
[1] World Wide Web Consortium, "Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) 1.1", May 2000, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-
20000508>.
However, http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508 is not
a W3C publication; it is a submission by its authors, and has
not much more standing in the W3C than an Internet Draft has
in the IETF. At a minimum, the attribution of the reference should
be fixed. The authors are Box, Ehnebuske, Kakivaya et al.
However, the status of the document cited should also
be made clear. The document says:
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.
Part of the discussion in the XML protocol group in W3C is about
the various characteristics of SOAP binding. I thought during the
discussion of the "SOAPAction" header in the HTTP binding that perhaps
a binding of SOAP to a 'transfer' protocol might require other information.
Should there be something in "SOAP over BEEP" corresponding to the
SOAPAction header? The status of SOAPAction in the XML protocol group
has not been resolved definitively, although there's a discussion of
it in the same NOTE about SOAP.
Is reference [1] normative? Should a standards track document
(even a Proposed Standard) make normative reference to a W3C NOTE?
And how could you specify "SOAP over BEEP" without making normative
reference to SOAP?
I don't question the venue of IETF specifying the binding of SOAP
over transfer protocols, but I wonder about the timing.
Perhaps the IETF document could specify how to BEEP as a transfer
protocol for *any* SOAP-like protocol, but it's hard to imagine
it being specific enough to warrant "Proposed Standard".
To make progress, the IESG could publish "Using SOAP in BEEP" as
Experimental, and move it to standards track once there's an
appropriate reference for SOAP.
Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net
