[SOAP-over-UDP] comment on WSDL binding

[Sylvain Marié <sylvainmarie2@yahoo.fr>]

Hi everyone,

First of all thank you for all the work done in this WS-DD TC. As a Web Services and DPWS user, I am particularly happy that many little annoying things are now disambiguated in DPWS. In particular several of these made our work very difficult when we wrote the "DPWS for OSGi" specification in 2007 (OSGi RFP-86, the RFC has not been made public).

Anyway, I was a bit surprised that the brand new SOAP-over-UDP specification does not provide the only missing building block for using it easily in current Web Service engines: the WSDL binding. Indeed WSDL-driven code generators are widely used, and there is no doubt that standardising a WSDL binding would ease implementation of the DPWS standard in most public engines - thus enforcing interoperability. 

I don't know for the C world, but on the java side, there are already examples of "request for binding" that would solve quite a few interoperability issues and improve the overall developper's experience. See e.g. JSON or JMS bindings to name a few. One could argue that these transport protocols are a bit 'out of scope' of the core web services intent. But it is definitely not the case for SOAP-over-UDP, and DPWS proves that the need is real.

I hope that this TC will help building a simpler and easier-to-get web service vision, for devices.
Best regards.


Sylvain MARIE