[wsrp-markup] Handling of attachments and/or large markup responses

[Carsten Leue <cleue@de.ibm.com>]

I would like to open a discussion thread on the handling of attachments and
(possibly large) markup responses in WSRP.
In some cases it will be necessary to transport large amounts of data in
the context of a WSRP SOAP request. This occurs when
- uploading a file (currently part of the request context)
- returning markup (currently the markup is just a string. In some cases
this might become large (e.g. > 100KB))
- retuning state from the producer to the consumer

encoding such large data blobs in SOAP message may pose problems, at least
in SOAP4J ist seems as if it was not possible to transfer more than 50KB in
a SOAP message.
I would propose that we define the transfer of blobs like the file upload
via an attachment mechanism. The two standards that are of interest are
SOAP-Attachments (http://www.w3.org/TR/SOAP-attachments)
DIME
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/gxa/default.asp?pull=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/dimeindex.asp)

The latter seems to be the most interoperable one. What is the opinion of
the comittee?

If we agree on using attachments then we could allow this also as an option
for embedding resources (images, etc) in the returned markup in addition to
letting the consumer proxy these resources or embedding a direct link. Any
opinions on this?

Best regards
Carsten Leue

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Dr. Carsten Leue
Dept.8288, IBM Laboratory Böblingen , Germany
Tel.: +49-7031-16-4603, Fax: +49-7031-16-4401