xml-dev - XML socket server applications

[Tony O'Keeffe <tony.okeeffe@trintech.com>]

I have a question about XML socket server applications,
i.e. applications which:

1.  listen on a socket
2.  accept a connection
3.  accept one or more XML documents (requests) on the connection
4.  send one or more XML documents (responses) on the connection
5.  close the connection

Is it more usual to:

 (i)  Precede each XML document with a MIME header,
      including a Content-Length header (which might
      be mandatory for the purposes of the application), OR
 (ii) Just send "pure" XML documents with no preceding
      headers, OR
(iii) Do something else

Approach (i) has the advantage that it's easy to find out where
each XML document begins and ends before feeding it to a parser
(just use the Content-Length header), but my question
is what is the _usual_ approach for XML socket server applications?

Thanks

Tony