OFF TOPIC: Using HTTP compression with SOAP

["Mittermaier, Christian" <Ch...@fabasoft.com>]

Hi,

there was a posting to this list quite a time ago concerning compression of SOAP 
messages.
Actually, I am facing a similar problem now and I wonder if anybody has an idea or 
comment about it.

So my basic approach is as follows:
I don't want to care about compression at all, instead I want the web server to do this 
for me. I found two headers in the HTTP1.1 protocol specification, namely 
* Content-Encoding and 
* Accept-Encoding

Both can take values like gzip, compress or deflate, specifying the preferred compression 
methods. My knowledge about web server technologies is not too strong, so my questions 
are as follows:

- When I set both headers for a Soap message (i.e. Content-Encoding: gzip and Accept-
Encoding: gzip), will the web server care about compression upon posting the message to 
the service endpoint?

- Will the response transport also be compressed and if so, do I have to care about 
decompressing it or is it again done by the web server?

- Do you have any links to sites where I can find more information about this topic (not 
necessarily Apache-specific, but also IIS, etc.)

Thanks,
Chris

RE: Using HTTP compression with SOAP

[Kapil Kapoor <ka...@tatainfotech.com>]

Tiago, I have a web service client application implemented with MS SOAP
Toolkit, any idea if MS SOAP Toolkit supports compression ? If yes, can you
point how the configuration should be done to achieve compression.

Regards
Kapil

-----Original Message-----
From: Tiago [mailto:tminc@uol.com.br]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 7:55 PM
To: soap-user@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: Using HTTP compression with SOAP


Hi, Christian.

The main idea for HTTP is that if the request header says "Accept-Encoding:
gzip" and the web server can do gzip compression, the the response header
will
contain "Content-Encoding: gzip" and the content will be gzipped.

I know most web servers support "on the fly" compression. You should check
if
your client can send deal with it, most of the times it requires only
configuration. Perhaps it is already doing it!

Even if both client and server can deal with compression, if the request
header
doesn't specify Accept-Encoding with a value that the server recognizes, the
response will come decompressed.

By the way, your question is all but OFF TOPIC!! :-)

Cheers, Tiago.

Re: Using HTTP compression with SOAP

[Tiago <tm...@uol.com.br>]

Hi, Christian.

The main idea for HTTP is that if the request header says "Accept-Encoding:
gzip" and the web server can do gzip compression, the the response header will
contain "Content-Encoding: gzip" and the content will be gzipped.

I know most web servers support "on the fly" compression. You should check if
your client can send deal with it, most of the times it requires only
configuration. Perhaps it is already doing it!

Even if both client and server can deal with compression, if the request header
doesn't specify Accept-Encoding with a value that the server recognizes, the
response will come decompressed.

By the way, your question is all but OFF TOPIC!! :-)

Cheers, Tiago.