Reference [1] in draft-etal-beep-soap-04.txt is written
[1] World Wide Web Consortium, "Simple Object Access Protocol
(SOAP) 1.1", May 2000, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-
20000508>.
However, http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508 is not
a W3C publication; it is a submission by its authors, and has
not much more standing in the W3C than an Internet Draft has
in the IETF. At a minimum, the attribution of the reference should
be fixed. The authors are Box, Ehnebuske, Kakivaya et al.
ok. it's easy enough to fix this.
Perhaps the IETF document could specify how to BEEP as a transfer
protocol for *any* SOAP-like protocol, but it's hard to imagine
it being specific enough to warrant "Proposed Standard".
To make progress, the IESG could publish "Using SOAP in BEEP" as
Experimental, and move it to standards track once there's an
appropriate reference for SOAP.
the document in question is 16 months old and forms the basis for many
implementations, products, services, and so on.
i think that those implementors would be somewhat confused by your view that
"it's hard to imagine it being specific enough".
in theory, i might agree with you; however, the practice is far different
from the theoretical perspective you suggest...
/mtr