new issue: What is the purpose of the WSDL?

["Jonathan Marsh" <jonathan@wso2.com>]

Title: What is the purpose of the WSDL?

 

Issue: The purpose of the WSDL is not terribly clear.  I doubt one would actually describe a Web service using this WSDL, as RM is generally considered an infrastructure-level protocol and WSDL typically describes an application-level message exchange.  In addition, if machine-processing of this WSDL is expected, not all message exchanges are described – after a MakeConnection message comes _in_ to the service, a CreateSequence message may come _out_, yet CreateSequence is only described as an _in_ message in the WSDL.  The limits of the WSDL in describing the complete exchanges of messages should be noted.

 

Proposal: fix this editorially by adding the following explanatory text to “Appendix B.  WSDL”:

 

This WSDL describes the RM protocol from the point of view of an RM Destination.  In the case where an endpoint acts both as an RM Destination and an RM Source, note that additional messages may be present in exchanges with that endpoint.

 

Also note that this WSDL is intended to describe the internal structure of the RM protocol, and will not generally to appear in a description of an RM-capable Web service.  See RM-Policy [ref] for a higher-level mechanism to indicate that RM is engaged.

 

Jonathan Marsh - http://www.wso2.com - http://auburnmarshes.spaces.live.com