users@jax-rpc.java.net

Re: JAX-RPC 2.0 enhancements and changes - feedback requested

From: Gabriel Bauman <gabe_at_bravenet.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 17:02:42 -0700

Hi Doug...

On Wed, 2004-07-14 at 15:06 -0700, Doug Kohlert wrote:
> Should wscompile and wsdeploy leave the default mode as rpc/encoded for
> backwards compatibility reasons, or should the default be changed to
> document/literal?

The default should absolutely not be changed. If you are at all worried
about backwards compatibility, build tools should not change behaviour
just because new features are added.

My suggestion would be to have both -f:rpcencoded and -f:documentliteral
defined by the tools. If neither option is specified, default to
rpcencoded to maintain compatibility, but print a big warning to the
console telling people to explicitly specify their preference. This way
current build scripts would continue to function entirely as expected,
and everyone would be made aware that the emerging document/literal
standard is not being used, but is available.

The absolute most drastic measure I would consider reasonable would be
removing the concept of a "default format" and forcing users to choose
what they want for output. This would break build scripts, but it would
only break them once. Just making documentliteral the default would not
cause the build to fail, but introduces unexpected behaviour, which is a
Very Bad Thing. If you change the default behaviour in the next version,
you MUST ENSURE THAT EXISTING BUILD SCRIPTS FAIL. I can't emphasize this
enough.

To summarize, I suggest either:

A. Leave the default as-is and print an informational message to the
console when output type is not explicitly specified,

or

B. Remove the default behaviour and force users to specify the type of
output they require.

In a perfect world, my preference would be B, but A is probably the
friendliest.

Thanks for inviting input, and for the excellent product.

==
Gabriel Bauman <gabe_at_bravenet.com>
Bravenet Web Services, Inc.



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