Return-Path: Delivered-To: apmail-xml-axis-dev-archive@xml.apache.org Received: (qmail 84159 invoked by uid 500); 21 Nov 2001 03:06:26 -0000 Mailing-List: contact axis-dev-help@xml.apache.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk Reply-To: axis-dev@xml.apache.org list-help: list-unsubscribe: list-post: Delivered-To: mailing list axis-dev@xml.apache.org Received: (qmail 84150 invoked from network); 21 Nov 2001 03:06:26 -0000 Message-ID: <022601c17239$66e2b380$5ba17cca@watson.ibm.com> From: "Sanjiva Weerawarana" To: "Axis Development List" Subject: WSDL4J & yesterday's IRC log - problems with getting RPC info Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 09:05:20 +0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 X-Spam-Rating: daedalus.apache.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N Lotsa interesting stuff in yesterday's chat .. ===== [13:54] It's also a bit of a pain to work from operation to message to part to find out argument name/types [13:54] You noticed! [13:55] I've been complaining to the WSDL4J folks about that for weeks, now. [13:55] Can we fix that? [13:55] That's one of the big things missing in WSDL4J. [13:55] Of course only us RPC'ers care about such things, but we're still a bit audience. [13:56] In other words, for the case where we're using introspection to fill in a model, for instance, it would be nice to just fill in operations which each have argument lists, and have the WSDL stuff automatically do the Message layer.... ===== I think the above discussion shows a mis-understanding of WSDL4J and J-WSDL. J-WSDL is scoped as an API for WSDL. WSDL4J is an implementation of J-WSDL. As an API for WSDL, J-WSDL must be true to WSDL. When WSDL was designed, it was done carefully to not special case RPC style operations. Instead, port types (interfaces) have a logical operation concept which can be bound to an RPC exchange or a non-RPC style exchange. WSDL, I believe, achieves that goal quite well. The net result, of course, is that the pure & simple RPC case becomes a bit painful. If you find J-WSDL painful to use to find RPC signatures that's because WSDL is painful for that case. You can rightfully argue that having to define a with s is a damn painful way to define a simple operation signature. You would be quite right! However, it was done that way for a purpose (and not only because we have screwy minds). We can certainly revisit that purpose, but J-WSDL is not the place to do it .. it must occur in the W3C service description WG (assuming the damn thing gets going at some point). So, given that J-WSDL cannot have RPC-specific stuff. Now, while J-WSDL cannot have it, there's no reason why WSDL4J cannot have it. As an implementation of the API, it can certainly do an "embrace and extend" on it and provide what amounts to convenience APIs for naviging the J-WSDL object model assuming that it described RPC style operations. That translates to a layer above the base ref implementation (which was also mentioned later in the chat). If the WSDL4J extensions of Axis and WSDL2Java are generic enough to warrant being in the base impl itself, then we should put it into WSDL4J. I suggest we live with an external extension for now and revisit this once WSDL4J has come out of the closet. If at the end of the day J-WSDL and WSDL4J don't cut it, well, then its time to invent another object model for WSDL! Sanjiva.