WS-Addressing

You can use WS-Addressing to specify message destinations and other information that is not part of the SOAP protocol.

The SOAP protocol does not provide a standard way to specify message destination, where to return a response, or how to report an error. Traditionally these details have usually been handled by the transport layer. For example, when a SOAP request is sent over HTTP, the URI of the HTTP request determines the message's destination. The message response is packaged in the HTTP response and received by the client over the HTTP connection. When a SOAP request message is sent asynchronously through JMS, a destination for responses might be specified in the JMS message headers, incorporated into the message body, or left up to the service implementation.

The WS-Addressing specifications provide a uniform method for incorporating delivery, reply-to, and fault handler addressing information into a SOAP envelope. WS-Addressing defines two constructs that convey such addressing information: endpoint references and message addressing properties.