<soap:Header xmlns="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<title>My first item</title>
<date>2003-03-12T11:02:14Z</date>
<creator>Don Box</creator>
<creator>Joe Beda</reator>
<creator>Tim Ewald</creator>
<creator>Chris Anderson</creator>
<subject>Rocks</subject>
<subject>XML</subject>
<description>
this is some <xhtml:em>important</xhtml:em> text.
</description>
</soap:Header>
It's a little better, but I still don't see why it can't be as simple as throwing and RSS Item element with all the necessary data into the Body and a security element in the header. If you want to use dc elements, put 'em into the RSS Item. This approach replaces RSS with SOAP which is unnecessary IMHO.
Well sure, they're easily overcome and I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad approach, I'm just saying that I see very little justification for doing it. In the end, of course, it's all just data and it's all going to the same place, but what's the justification for pulling these out and putting them in the header? I just don't see it..... at least not yet. I am open to being convinced.
I think you should only put meta-data in the header. If you think that title, date, subject, creator are meta-data you should put them in the header. Else you should put then in the body. From my point of view the version of the web service, the execution domain (test or production), all these types of things are metadata so I would put them in the header. But title, date, subject are data so I will put them in the body. Am I right ?
Posted by didier at
Didier: in a nutshell, Don's non-proposal is to put the elements which correspond to the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set into the header.
On a more serious note: one man's ceiling is another man's floor. I spent much of the 90's implementing a meta-meta-meta model. I came away with the conclusion that it is just data.
"GOD" is an acronym which stands for "GOD Over Djinn". The word "Djinn" is used to designate Genies, Meta-Genies, Meta-Meta-Genies, etc. It is a Typeless word.
I agree with you that the distinction between data and meta-data is just matter of our point of view.
You know, I've been considering It's just Symbols for my English blog for too much time (since New Year). As they say in Taxi Driver, One of These Days I gotta get myself organizized.
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Data, meta-data, meta-meta-data ... who cares! What's important is where you put it and whether or not everyone else agrees to put it in the same place! And I still don't see a reason to put it in the SOAP header! :-)