[Nmc-wg] Transport protocol

[Jason Zurawski]

All;

>> In practice, only XML in SOAP over HTTP seems to be used. To we want to
>> impose that? I think it should be, though I am fine if it is either in
>> the NMC base document or in another document (which has the advantage
>> that if we later want to change the transport protocol, it is not
>> necessary to update the base document).
>
> I think that's already "imposed" and so we should document it as
> such.  I think you raise a good point, in that it shouldn't need to
> be a requirement forever.  If we are careful (and maybe not even
> too careful) we could have the WS encoding be any of the standard
> varieties.  So I, for one, would vote for also saying that -- "it is XML/
> SOAP/HTTP now, but needn't be forever."

When I started the documentation it was my intention to avoid specifics 
of the WS (e.g. 'XML in SOAP over HTTP') because I think it is important 
that we don't inject implementation details into the description of the 
protocol bindings.  This would strike me as making a heavy handed 
mandate on implementation styles and choices, particularly when I would 
envision future versions of NMC-capable frameworks trying different 
things as technologies mature or improve.

Including this as 'we do this now, but we don't have to' still doesn't 
sound 100% correct me if we are going forward with the idea to document 
the "current" way of doing things with minor corrections, but I suppose 
I could be convinced.  I would rather us not mandate the WS medium at 
all because it doesn't strike me as important to the overall 
functionality.

>> Beside describing the transport protocol, which document is to defined
>> the preferred TCP server ports for a given service? I presume the
>> documents describing the individual services should define the later.
>
> There are conventions, but as the are registered in the information
> service, they can change.  The conventions could be added as
> informative text, as you suggest.

As Martin (and Aaron) pointed out - this is an implementation detail.  I 
want to avoid this at all costs.

-jason