The W3C SOAP Working Drafts have reached Last Call status and are available on the Technical Reports page.

Six documents were released on 26 June 2002:

• SOAP Version 1.2 Part 0: Primer
• SOAP Version 1.2 Part 1: Messaging Framework
• SOAP Version 1.2 Part 2: Adjuncts
• SOAP Version 1.2 Usage Scenarios
• SOAP Version 1.2 Specification Assertions and Test Collcection
• SOAP Version 1.2 Email Binding

Other than the email binding document, which is a Note, all of these are "Last Call" documents. Public archived comments should be sent to xmlp-comments@w3.org before the deadline of July 19th.

The biggest change in these drafts is the addition of a binding to GET method of the HTTP protocol, which enables a URI to be associated directly with a SOAP resource. The W3C TAG issued a finding entitled "URIs, Addressability, and the use of HTTP GET" which influenced these changes.

David Fallside, Chair of the W3C XML Protocol Working Group summarized the changes made in response to the W3C TAG finding on the public www-tag mailing list:

"The specification now makes clear that information needed to identify SOAP resources should be in URIs where practical, regardless of whether the operation is GET or POST, or whether SOAP RPC is being used."

"We have added explanations of when GET semantics are appropriate for use in retrieving packages of SOAP information, i.e. when the retrievals are safe."

"We have used the SOAP binding framework to enhance the SOAP HTTP binding to support GET scenarios. Specifically, a new Message Exchange Pattern (MEP) and a new feature are defined, and both are supported by the enhanced HTTP binding."

The part 0 document includes an overall list of changes since SOAP 1.1. A few of the more significant changes are:

• SOAP is no longer an acronym, just a name.
• SOAP is defined in terms of an XML infoset, rather than XML syntax.
• New "roles" (formerly "actors") for defining processing along SOAP intermediaries.
• In the HTTP binding, the SOAPAction HTTP header defined in SOAP 1.1 has been removed. The contents of the former SOAPAction HTTP header are now expressed as a value of an "action" attribute of the "application/soap+xml" media type that is signaled in the HTTP binding.
• RPC requests and responses can now be arrays, which have a simpler syntax.
• Types on nodes are now optional.

One editorial note requests specific Last Call feedback on the issue of "generics".

A list of open Last Call issues against these documents can be found here.