<section serious="no" note="be careful to note smileys"> 

   Oh, sure, send a note saying that you will be up all night after I go to
   bed (I'm on the east coast)...  ;-)

   Ask people to tell you what to write, and then when they tell you what
   to write, tell them you will think about it, but never get back to them.
   ;-)

   Don't say that you haven't finished thinking about it yet - you are the
   one saying that it should be ready to freeze at 9 am.  ;-)

</section> 

The attached e-mail contained a very specific request.  Dave, I'm still
curious as to what you think.

I appear to not have been successful to date in finding the words that
convey my concern.  I'll continue trying, sometimes borrowing words from
others, sometimes trying different tactics.

New approach:

   Question: What do you call a spec that permits some of the MUST NOTs
     that another spec does not?
   Answer: A superset.

   Question: What do you call a spec that does not require all of the MUSTs
     that another spec does?
   Answer: A superset.

   Question: What do you call a spec that starts with another spec and adds
     additional MUSTs?
   Answer: A subset

   Question: What do you call a spec that starts with another spec and adds
     additional MUST NOTs?
   Answer: A subset

   Question: Given these answers, is the current BDG a superset or a
     subset?
   Answer: Both.  Neither.  A dialect.  A different protocol.  I'm so
     confused!

A quick start would say something like:

    "if you see something that looks like a header - look for a
   mustunderstand attribute and if you find it - simply fail the request!
   At some point in the future, you might want to add in support for
   headers, but for now you don't so simply reject the request."

Header support could be in a second chapter of the quick start.  As could a
number of other aspects of SOAP.  Don't banish them forever from the "BDG
subset" of SOAP, simply don't require them in the first cautious steps
towards SOAP interop.

Again, I would like to see this document describe an on-ramp not a
destination.

Keep up the good work!

- Sam Ruby

---------------------- Forwarded by Sam Ruby/Raleigh/IBM on 04/02/2001
09:26 AM ---------------------------

Sam Ruby/Raleigh/IBM@[...].. on 04/01/2001 03:49:20 PM

Please respond to soapbuilders@[...].com

To:   soapbuilders@[...].com
cc:
Subject:  Re: [soapbuilders] RFC: Top of BDG



Dave,

My two cents: much improved.

It is probably way too late for this suggestion, but I will give it anyway.
Consider renaming the document to "A Quick Start to Soap 1.1".

There are four occurrences of the word subset in this document.  The two in
the first paragraph can evaporate.  The one in the scalars section can be
changed to "examples include".  The one in the goals section should be
replaced with something along the lines of "an accessible description that
people could put to use immediately and productively".

There is no need to label this as establishing a subset.  Nobody expects a
quick start to be exhaustive.  And the wisdom of subsetting is
controversial.  I, for one, believe that a subset is a good starting point
but not a good stopping point.  You may decide never to go beyond the
subset you have defined over the past few days, but if you do, the market
will decide whether or not your stopping is a good idea.  And, if in the
future, you do reconsider, hopefully there will be a number of open
implementations available to you to build upon.

So, my advice is to avoid the issue.  It is a distraction.

Is it your goal to provide an on-ramp to SOAP 1.1, or is it your goal to
divide the SOAP community?  Think about that for a moment.

- Sam Ruby

P.S.  What got me concerned was the survey that you recently ran.  I didn't
like any of the options.  Despite (or perhaps because of?) the results, you
apparently have decided to made it your business to make the first option
on your survey a reality.



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