On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 01:26, Paul Prescod wrote:
> Michael Brennan wrote:
> >
> >...
> >
> > It seems to me the default should be the one that addresses the broadest
> > number of use cases.
> >
> > MIME multipart is unarguably the better approach for transmitting
> > documents. But XML is well suited for modeling structured information of
> > arbitrary complexity. If I'm interested in exchanging structured
> > information over the web and am not concerned with exchanging entire
> > documents, and I know that I am going to need to parse an XML message
> > either way, then modeling the relevant components of information as
> > element structures wrapped in element structures scoped to a different
> > namespace is more convenient and useful than modeling them as separate
> > XML documents in a MIME multipart envelope. The latter just means I now
> > have to parse 2 document formats instead of one, even though I'm
> > deriving no benefits from MIME.
>
> In practice you are almost always transmitting SOAP messages over a MIME
> transport like HTTP or SMTP anyhow.
You *are* aware that HTTP is "not a MIME-compliant protocol"? Section
19.4.1, first sentence. Although it's possible to do MIME-like (to use
the phrase from the RFC) stuff with it, it isn't the same.
As long as the processors are packing and unpacking if they move between
protocols, it isn't that much of an issue. But it isn't ... exactly ...
MIME.
Amy!
--
Amelia A. Lewis
To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.
-- Laia Asieo Odo (Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed")
