users@wadl.java.net

Re: complexType in WADL?

From: Marc Hadley <Marc.Hadley_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:47:07 -0400

On Jul 1, 2008, at 9:32 AM, Christian Liebing wrote:
>
> i'm a student and currently writing my master thesis. i have two
> questions regarding the WADL specification.
>
> 1. Are complexType's as in WSDL (e.g. enumerations) are possible in
> WADL?

You can use any feature of xml schema (the technology WSDL uses for
describing XML structures) in WADL for describing representation
contents. The only restriction is that you have to name a global
element as the root element of a representation - there's no
equivalent of the WSDL RPC style.
>
> 2. Why do WADL have WADL have attributes for param like 'required'?
> I mean we have a xsd (e.g. for Amazon Itemsearch
> 'AWSECommerceService.xsd) were it already can specified. So it is a
> kind of duplication? (I know that for ItemSearch method it is useful
> becaus the xsd says that you don't need the SearchIndex. )
>
WADL uses xml schema to describe the contents of a representation (a
HTTP entity body to be exact). It doesn't use schema to describe non-
xml stuff.

Params represent things like URI query parameters, path template
parameters etc, not parts of an XML representation. Using XML schema,
which describes a concrete XML structure, to describe something like
query parameters would be counter intuitive IMO.

Marc.

---
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley at sun.com>
CTO Office, Sun Microsystems.