Web Things, by Mark Baker

Until last week, the SOAP document/literal examples I’d seen differed from the rpc/encoded ones only by the encoding. Then I spotted this example (in section 5.1 – sorry, no URI) in the WSDL 2.0 Primer;

<?xml version='1.0' ?>
<env:Envelope xmlns:env="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">
 <env:Body>
	<customerName>Kevin Liu</customerName>
	<checkInDate>2002-09-01</checkInDate>
	<checkOutDate>2002-09-10</checkOutDate>
	<roomType>double</roomType>
	<comments>the customer will be arriving late in the evening</comments>
 </env:Body>
</env:Envelope>

Ignoring the problem that there’s not a single child element of env:Body, this is, from a Web architecture POV, quite encouraging; we have a SOAP envelope encapsulating state. Very RESTful (at least the part of the architecture that is visible in that example).

But if you know where (how?) to look, the Web is nearby. The key is to realize, once you’re dealing in state, that the obvious next question is, “The state of what?”