Re: [ws-caf] Fault message formats

[Mark Little <Mark.Little@arjuna.com>]

Bryan, your quick review of specs. is definitely informative. IMO I wouldn't
that I'm against using SOAP Faults for this, only that (as you've found)
there is no clear standard approach. As with everything, I think if there is
a real requirement for this, then we should do it. Otherwise, let's wait and
see. The WS-I compliance is also very important as Simeon pointed out.

Mark.

----
Mark Little,
Chief Architect, Transactions,
Arjuna Technologies Ltd.

www.arjuna.com


----- Original Message -----
From: "Murray, Bryan P." <bryan.murray@hp.com>
To: "Mark Little" <mark.little@arjuna.com>; <ws-caf@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 12:04 AM
Subject: RE: [ws-caf] Fault message formats


> Since the TC members are clearly opposed to using the SOAP Fault element
> to convey fault information related to WS-Context messages, I will
> refrain from further comments on the subject. However, I thought the
> group might be interested in the results of a very unscientific and
> incomplete research to see how some other specifications handle faults.
>
> I divided specs into 3 categories. First there were specs that either
> did not directly define messages or did not specify a WSDL document.
> BPEL and WSFL fall into this category, although the text and examples in
> WSFL imply that SOAP Faults are intended to be used with the lifetime
> operations that are defined.
>
> The next category is for specs that explicitly do not use the SOAP Fault
> element. In my quick review I only ran across WS-Reliability for this
> category. This spec does require the use of the SOAP Fault element in
> request-response exchanges, but does not put any information in the
> Fault element, using a SOAP Header element instead.
>
> The last category is for specs which use the wsdl:fault element and have
> text implying the use of the SOAP Fault element. In this category are
> WS-MetaDataExchange, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-Coordination.
> WS-Coordination is underspecified in the area of faults, but the
> following statement from the introduction to the section titled
> "Coordination Faults" is a pretty strong indication of the intent: "For
> example, when used with SOAP 1.2 the identifier code is the fault
> sub-code and any additional information is passed in the detail." I
> think an earlier version of WS-Coordination did define their own fault
> messages.
>
> I also looked at ebXML Messaging. Although that spec talks about using
> SOAP Faults when the severity is error but not when it is warning, I
> think it is more like WS-Reliability uses them. It is not very clear in
> the spec.
>
> I did not include specs which build on those listed above such as
> WS-AtomicTransaction, or other ebXML specs. I also did not include the
> specs this TC is writing or some more contentious specs such as WSRF.
>
> This review did not produce any clear direction although it seems that
> more recently written specs have a stronger tendency to use the SOAP
> Fault element to convey error information then older specs did.
>
> Bryan
>