Thanks Rich.  Why can't SOAP simply point to 
its Infoset-based specification to normatively 
denote what the allowable syntax productions 
will be for a SOAP document instance/aka, message? 
That is what they do, yes?  Why do they need 
a syntax-subset on top of that since they do 
not validate what they bind?

I didn't intend to start an infoset vs syntax 
war.  Oh well... obviously that concerns folks, 
but as specs go, there seems to be a disconnect 
here between what SOAP specifies and the means 
of it, and what it needs.  If I understand you, 
they want to cite a subset for binding instead 
of simply denoting via the mapping of their 
information items which parts of XML they 
can accept usefully, and by that, tightly 
couple back to their infoset implementation.

Ok within their application, but it makes 
very little sense in terms of the overall 
XML specification family to force that 
tight coupling back out to the generalized 
XML processor.  If the "subsetting has begun", 
then it has begun awkwardly and without much 
thought with regards to the environment.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Rich Salz [mailto:rsalz@[...].com]

>  If the SOAP specification is built on the infoset,
>  is a syntax-subset necessary?

The SOAP processing model (i.e., what you do with a message, what its
semantics are, etc) is described in terms of the XML Infoset.
The only defined binding of a SOAP message is XML over HTTP.   There are
other sample bindings, but they all do XML over other transports.

So yes, even the SOAP WG recognizes that XML is necessary for interop.
        /r$

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