Re: design question

[Anne Thomas Manes]

Vishal,   A SOAP runtime system should provide a layer of abstraction between your message format and the application that implements the service. Hence the format of the message (Doc/literal vs RPC/encoded) shouldn't really impact the design of your service. The SOAP runtime system should be able to marshal and unmarshal the messages, map XML to Java, dispatch the appropriate application, and transform exceptions into SOAP fault messages for you -- all based on the WSDL description and deployment descriptor -- regardless of whether you use RPC or document style messages. Your application shouldn't need to process XML unless you choose to receive the message as an XML document.   You should not assume that the SOAP runtime will validate the document. If you want it to perform validation before processing, you would need to specify a validation interceptor in your deployment descriptor (to call a handler in your handler chain). You should assume that the SOAP runtime will parse the document and deserialize it into Java objects. If you are using RPC/encoded, then it does the mapping based on the SOAP Section 5 data model. If you are using Document/Literal, then it does the mapping based on the XML Schema message description.   When writing a service, you should do what you would normally do in any Java application -- throw an exception. The SOAP runtime system should catch the exception and transform it into the appropriate SOAP fault message. The client SOAP runtime system should be able to interpret the SOAP fault, and assuming it's a Java system, rethrow the exception for the client.   Now, of course, these best practices don't necessarily apply to Web services written using Apache SOAP. You must realise that Apache SOAP is a very old SOAP implementation that doesn't support WSDL, is very RPC/encoded-centric, and doesn't support doc/literal according to the standard.   Unless you have legacy applications based on Apache SOAP, I recommend that you start using Apache Axis (http://ws.apache.org/axis), or any of the 20 or so commercial implementations that fully support SOAP 1.1, WSDL 1.1, JAX-RPC, and the WS-I Basic Profile.   Best regards, Anne   ----- Original Message ----- From: Vishal Shah To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 10:59 AM Subject: design question Hi,   I've a couple of design questions...I've a Doc/literal style service..   What's the best way to handle any abnormal conditions and errors ?Should the service throw an exception or should it create a "error" element in a response document ?   Is it safe to assume that in Doc/literal style, a doc gets parsed and validated using a schema ? If not, is the service responsible for validating (coarse-grained validation) the document ? Pl advise...   Thanks VS   Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!