[ebxml-dev] ebXML MS Headers and Application layer processing

[Fraser Goffin <goffinf@hotmail.com>]

Should application message handlers ever need to refer to ebXML headers or 
are such headers regarded as information that is targeted at protocol 
handlers that perform non application specific tasks such as authentication 
or routing (i.e. the ebXMLMS protocol handler) ?

If when designing a SOAP service the same piece of data is required for 
application and non application specific purposes, should it be carried in a 
SOAP Header AND as part of the SOAP Body payload ?

An ebXMLMS example :

As a service provider I decide to use the ConversationId of the 
MessageHeader header to relate a quote request to a quote response that will 
be provided later (i.e. asynchronously). This ConversationId is used as a 
key to [say] a database row which will at some point contain the response 
message and it is the application message service handler that goes and 
checks for it and returns it to the original caller.

Is this reasonable, or does it smack of a poor implementation which is 
muddling protocol level and application level data ??


A general SOAP example:

Say I pass authentication credentials as a SOAP Header (as follows). During 
the processing of this message, I perform the authentication step extracting 
the credentials from the SOAP header and passing to an authentication 
process. If authentication is successful I call the service specific message 
handler and use the authentication UserID as a lookup for other information 
(say a commission rate). Would you expect the UserId data to appear as part 
of the payload definition as well ? :-

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="..."
  <SOAP-ENV:Header>
    <frg:Authentication xmlns:frg="some-uri">
      <frg:UserId>0123456789</frg:CustomerRef>
      <frg:Pwd>135246</frg:Pwd>
    </frg:Authentication>
  </SOAP-ENV:Header>
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <ns1:myPayload xmlns:ns1="..."
    ...

Regards

Fraser.

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