Network Working Group M. Baker Internet-Draft Independent Expires: November 15, 2004 M. Nottingham BEA Systems May 17, 2004 The "application/soap+xml" media type draft-baker-soap-media-reg-06 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on November 15, 2004. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document defines the "application/soap+xml" media type which can be used to describe SOAP 1.2 messages serialized as XML 1.0. 1. Notational Conventions The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. Baker & Nottingham Expires November 15, 2004 [Page 1] =0C Internet-Draft The "application/soap+xml" media type May 2004 2. Introduction SOAP version 1.2 (SOAP) is a lightweight protocol intended for exchange of structured information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment. It defines an extensible messaging framework that contains a message construct based on XML technologies that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. This specification defines the media type "application/soap+xml" which can be used to identify SOAP 1.2 message envelopes that have been serialized with XML 1.0. Such serializations are useful as the basis of "wire formats" for SOAP 1.2 Protocol Binding Specifications [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624], or in other situations where an XML serialization of a SOAP envelope is required. The "application/soap+xml" media type explicitly identifies SOAP 1.2 message envelopes that have been serialised with XML 1.0; message envelopes with a different SOAP namespace version or using another XML serialisation MUST NOT use it. 3. Registration MIME media type name: application MIME subtype name: soap+xml Required parameters: none Optional parameters: "charset": This parameter has identical semantics to the charset parameter of the "application/xml" media type as specified in RFC 3023 [RFC3023]. "action": This optional parameter can be used to specify the URI that identifies the intent of the message. In SOAP 1.2, it serves a similar purpose as the SOAPAction HTTP header field did in SOAP 1.1. Namely, its value identifies the intent of the message. The value of the action parameter is an absolute URI-reference as defined by RFC 2396 [RFC2396]. SOAP places no restrictions on the specificity of the URI or that it is resolvable. Although the purpose of the action parameter is to indicate the intent of the SOAP message there is no mechanism for automatically computing the value based on the SOAP envelope. In other words, the value has to be determined out of band. It is recommended that the same value be used to identify sets of message types that are logically connected in some manner, for example part of the same "service". It is strongly RECOMMENDED that the URI be globally unique and stable over time. Baker & Nottingham Expires November 15, 2004 [Page 2] =0C Internet-Draft The "application/soap+xml" media type May 2004 The presence and content of the action parameter MAY be used by servers such as firewalls to appropriately filter SOAP messages and it may be used by servers to facilitate dispatching of SOAP messages to internal message handlers etc. It SHOULD NOT be used as an insecure form of access authorization. Use of the action parameter is OPTIONAL. SOAP Receivers MAY use it as a hint to optimize processing, but SHOULD NOT require its presence in order to operate. Encoding considerations: Identical to those of "application/xml" as described in RFC 3023 [RFC3023], section 3.2, as applied to the SOAP envelope infoset. Security considerations: Because SOAP can carry application defined data whose semantics is independent from that of any MIME wrapper (or context within which the MIME wrapper is used), one should not expect to be able to understand the semantics of the SOAP message based on the semantics of the MIME wrapper alone. Therefore, whenever using the "application/soap+xml" media type, it is strongly RECOMMENDED that the security implications of the context within which the SOAP message is used is fully understood. The security implications are likely to involve both the specific SOAP binding to an underlying protocol as well as the application-defined semantics of the data carried in the SOAP message (though one must be careful when doing this, as discussed in SOAP 1.2 Part 1 [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624], section Binding to Application-Specific Protocols. Also, see SOAP 1.2 Part 1 [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624], the entire section Security Considerations. In addition, as this media type uses the "+xml" convention, it shares the same security considerations as described in RFC 3023 [RFC3023], section 10. Interoperability considerations: There are no known interoperability issues. Published specification: SOAP 1.2 Part 1 [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624] and SOAP 1.2 Part 2 [W3C.REC-soap12-part2-20030624]. Applications which use this media type: No known applications currently use this media type. Additional information: File extension: SOAP messages are not required or expected to be stored as files. Fragment identifiers: Identical to that of "application/xml" as described in RFC 3023 [RFC3023], section 5. Base URI: As specified in RFC 3023 [RFC3023], section 6. Also see SOAP 1.2 Part 1 [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624], section Use of URIs in SOAP. Baker & Nottingham Expires November 15, 2004 [Page 3] =0C Internet-Draft The "application/soap+xml" media type May 2004 Macintosh File Type code: TEXT Person and email address to contact for further information: Mark Nottingham Intended usage: COMMON Author/Change controller: The SOAP 1.2 specification set is a work product of the World Wide Web Consortium's XML Protocol Working Group. The W3C has change control over these specifications. 4. Security Considerations See the "Security Considerations" section of the registration template found in Section 3. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [RFC3023] Murata, M., St. Laurent, S. and D. Kohn, "XML Media Types", RFC 3023, January 2001. [W3C.REC-soap12-part1-20030624] Hadley, M., Mendelsohn, N., Moreau, J., Nielsen, H. and M. Gudgin, "SOAP Version 1.2 Part 1: Messaging Framework", W3C REC REC-soap12-part1-20030624, June 2003. [W3C.REC-soap12-part2-20030624] Moreau, J., Nielsen, H., Gudgin, M., Hadley, M. and N. Mendelsohn, "SOAP Version 1.2 Part 2: Adjuncts", W3C REC REC-soap12-part2-20030624, June 2003. Authors' Addresses Mark A. Baker Independent 37 Charles St. Ottawa, Ontario K1M 1R3 CA EMail: mailto:distobj@acm.org Baker & Nottingham Expires November 15, 2004 [Page 4] =0C Internet-Draft The "application/soap+xml" media type May 2004 Mark Nottingham BEA Systems 235 Montgomery St., Level 15 San Francisco, CA 94010 US EMail: mailto:mnot@pobox.com Baker & Nottingham Expires November 15, 2004 [Page 5] =0C Internet-Draft The "application/soap+xml" media type May 2004 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. 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