SOAP and OCP

[Alex Rousskov <rousskov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Abbie Barbir argued that OPES processors should support SOAP as a
foundation of OCP. Abbie, I think it is time to resume that discussion
in the OCP transport light/scope. I have three basic questions:

	1. SOAP is not a transport protocol. Would you
	   require a specific transport protocol to
	   be used if OCP is implemented using SOAP?
	   For example, would you require that BEEP/TCP and
	   only BEEP/TCP is used under SOAP?

	2. My understanding is that using SOAP pretty
	   much requires XML message format/encoding for
	   OCP messages. How do you suggest we implement
	   OCP data pipeline with SOAP? More specifically,
	   what is the best way to transfer, say, a 900KB
	   "binary" stream from OPES processor to callout server?
	   Single large SOAP message? Multiple small messages?
	   How to encode binary data?

	3. Does SOAP allow for SOAP "connections" that are
	   mapped to transport connections of some kind?
	   If we do not have access to transport connections,
	   how do we keep state and avoid constant
	   renegotiations? How do we guarantee that two
	   messages to the same callout server IP address
	   end up at the same server (as opposed to being
	   NATed or load-balanced to different servers)? Do
	   we care about IP not being sufficient to identify
	   a real server?

Thanks,

Alex.