xml-dev - Re: XML socket server applications

[Chris Angus <Chris.Angus@btinternet.com>]

Tony

I cannot easily answer the question "Is it more usual" as I cannot speak for
what others do.  We use an XML socket server in one of our applications and
send "pure" XML documents in either direction.  We send one document at a
time in either direction and so have no problem in feeding them to the
parser.  As the socket (in our case) is only being used to handle XML there
seems to be little or no advantage in wrapping a well-formed XML document in
anything else.

Regards
Chris Angus
Home: +44 (0) 16977 41504
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Chris.Angus@BTinternet.com or Chris.C.Angus@opc.shell.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony O'Keeffe" <tony.okeeffe@trintech.com>
To: "'XML-Dev Mailing list'" <xml-dev@xml.org>
Sent: 20 November 2000 10:20
Subject: XML socket server applications


>
> 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
>