Life after service response?

[Rick Rineholt <ri...@us.ibm.com>]

I can see a scenario with attachments where a web service generates an
attachment as a response to a request and in some situation it would be
preferable for the attachment to be deleted once its sent .  In other cases
the attachment could be static content and would be sent again in the next
request in which case it would be preferable for it not to be deleted.  And
in some cases it might depend on the actual request at hand as whether the
attachment should be deleted after it is sent or not.  I see the need for a
service to be able to register an interface (i.e an object to receive an
event) that will be called back once the response has been sent.  I think
there should also be a method on this interface that if an exception is
generated after the response is returned to Axis that the  targeted web
service is called with the exception so it may do something that is
appropriate too.

interface AxisResponseStatus{
   /**'
     *  Called immediately once the response message has been successfully
sent.
     */
   public void success( MessageContext m);
   /**
    *  Called sometime after  the targeted method has finished the response
and
    *  Axis unsuccessfully  delivers the response.
    */

   public void failed( MessageContext m, Exception e);
}

Is there already an appropriate mechanism in Axis that could handle this?
I know with handlers there is some fault processing, but can they be
notified once the actual message has been successfully sent?  I see the
above as being possibly useful in cases besides attachments.  Thoughts?
Alternatives?  ? Yea? Nay?

Rick Rineholt
"The truth is out there...  All you need is a better search engine!"

rineholt@us.ibm.com