6 Use of URIs in SOAP

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	XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution By Frank  P.  Coyle
	Table of Contents
	Appendix  B.   SOAP Version 1.2 Part 1: Messaging Framework

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SOAP uses URIs for some identifiers including, but not limited to, values of the encodingStyle (see 4.1.1 SOAP encodingStyle Attribute ) and actor (see 4.2.2 SOAP actor Attribute ) attribute information items. To SOAP, a URI is simply a formatted string that identifies a web resource via its name , location, or via any other characteristics.

Although this section only applies to URIs directly used by information items defined by this specification, it is RECOMMENDED but NOT REQUIRED that application-defined data carried within a SOAP envelope use the same mechanisms and guidelines defined here for handling URIs.

URIs used as values in information items identified by the "http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-envelope" and "http://www.w3.org/2001/12/soap-encoding" XML namespaces can be either relative or absolute. In addition, URIs used as values of the local, unqualified href attribute information item can be relative or absolute.

SOAP does not define a base URI but relies on the mechanisms defined in XML Base[11] and RFC 2396[6] for establishing a base URI against which relative URIs can be made absolute.

The underlying protocol binding MAY define a base URI which can act as the base URI for the SOAP envelope (see 5 SOAP Protocol Binding Framework and the HTTP binding[1]).

SOAP does not define any equivalence rules for URIs in general as these are defined by the individual URI schemes and by RFC 2396[6]. However, because of inconsistencies with respect to URI equivalence rules in many current URI parsers, it is RECOMMENDED that SOAP senders do NOT rely on any special equivalence rules in SOAP receivers in order to determine equivalence between URI values used in a SOAP message.

The use of IP addresses in URIs SHOULD be avoided whenever possible (see RFC 1900[16]). However, when used, the literal format for IPv6 addresses in URI's as described by RFC 2732[12] SHOULD be supported.

SOAP does not place any a priori limit on the length of a URI. Any SOAP node MUST be able to handle the length of any URI that it publishes and both SOAP senders and SOAP receivers SHOULD be able to deal with URIs of at least 8k in length.

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