Description
This chapter specifies a protocol for transmitting a large SOAP-rooted, MIME Multipart/Related envelope (SWA and MTOM) message as a series of SOAP message fragments. The protocol composes with other SOAP protocols security, addressing, reliable messaging and ebMS. An implementation of the protocol operates as a discrete module in a SOAP processing pipeline. The protocol defines how a sending MSH can split a message in fragments and a receiving MSH can reassemble it from its fragments in an interoperable way.
While the protocol can be used with other Web Services profiles, its main goal is to support transfer of large ebMS messages. The main benefits of the protocol in that context are:
Support for both push and pull message exchange (whereas the AS2 restart feature is limited to push exchanges);
Reliable messaging is leveraged to transmit (and, if needed, retransmit) fragments;
The upper bound of the delays caused by a using store-and-forward intermediary and the temporary storage space needed by such an intermediary are proportional to the fragment size, rather than to the message size.
Fragments can be routed individually through a multi-hop network. Fragments may follow different paths from sender to recipient. If one intermediary fails and traffic is re-routed via an alternative route, only the undelivered fragments need to be resent.
The (optional) compression feature applies to the entire MIME envelope (rather than individual payloads, as in the AS4 compression feature) and includes the SOAP header.
The protocol composes with the ebMS message bundling feature.
