Re: Use of MIME multipart for zero payload containers

[christopher ferris <chris.ferris@sun.com>]

Possibly, but dispatching on content-type is pretty 
straight-forward. If multipart, then you need a multipart
handler. If just text/xml (or hopefully application/xml
or better yet application/soap+xml) then you don't.

Most of the SOAP implementations out there that are
doing SMwA are handling things in this manner (if there's
an attachment, then SMwA, if not, just send plain old SOAP
envelope as text/xml).

Cheers,

Chris

Dan Weinreb wrote:
> 
>    Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:07:23 -0500
>    From: "David Fischer" <david@drummondgroup.com>
> 
>    Doesn't zero payloads mean SOAP 1.1 rather than SOAP w/ Attachments since there
>    are no attachments?
> 
> Well, I think it's usually cleaner for two parties to agree that, at a
> certain layer, they are using one particular protocol (e.g. "SOAP 1.1
> with Attachments").  It's sort of unfortunate (error-prone, etc) if
> they have to say "at this layer, we sometimes talk protocol X and
> other times talk protocol Y, and the receiver of a message must
> "sniff" it to see which protocol it conforms to.  In my opinion, the
> "SOAP 1.1 with Attachments" protocol spec ought to clearly state how
> to transmit a SOAP message with zero attachments, rather than just
> abdicating and saying that it can't handle it.  Again, I don't think I
> can tell what the protocol spec is actually saying.
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