SOAP 1.2 conformance

[Sander Fieten <sander@fieten-it.com>]

Title: SOAP 1.2 conformance

Following our discussion during the call, I [quickly] read through the SOAP 1.2 spec and found the following which I think confirms that our re-insertion is conforming to the spec. I also think the @role attribute of the relevant header should be set to <<next>> otherwise the header might not be processed (see step 4 from the processing model “A SOAP node MAY also choose to process non-mandatory SOAP header blocks targeted at it.“) 

In section 2.6 on the processing of SOAP messages it is stated that “Unless otherwise stated, processing of all generated SOAP messages, SOAP faults and application-level side effects MUST be semantically equivalent to performing the following steps separately, and in the order given.”. 

Because our “virtual re-insertion” is semantically equivalent to the removal and insertion of a header we might say this conforms to the SOAP processing model.

In my opinion this view is confirmed by the following lines found in section 2.7.2 (just above 2.7.2.1): “Inserted SOAP header blocks might be indistinguishable from one or more of the header blocks removed by the intermediary. Processing is defined here in terms of re-inserting header blocks (rather than leaving them in place) to emphasize the need to process them at each SOAP node along the SOAP message path.”  

Sander