All;
In practice, only XML in SOAP over HTTP seems to be used. To we want to impose that? I think it should be, though I am fine if it is either in the NMC base document or in another document (which has the advantage that if we later want to change the transport protocol, it is not necessary to update the base document).
I think that's already "imposed" and so we should document it as such. I think you raise a good point, in that it shouldn't need to be a requirement forever. If we are careful (and maybe not even too careful) we could have the WS encoding be any of the standard varieties. So I, for one, would vote for also saying that -- "it is XML/ SOAP/HTTP now, but needn't be forever."
When I started the documentation it was my intention to avoid specifics of the WS (e.g. 'XML in SOAP over HTTP') because I think it is important that we don't inject implementation details into the description of the protocol bindings. This would strike me as making a heavy handed mandate on implementation styles and choices, particularly when I would envision future versions of NMC-capable frameworks trying different things as technologies mature or improve. Including this as 'we do this now, but we don't have to' still doesn't sound 100% correct me if we are going forward with the idea to document the "current" way of doing things with minor corrections, but I suppose I could be convinced. I would rather us not mandate the WS medium at all because it doesn't strike me as important to the overall functionality.
Beside describing the transport protocol, which document is to defined the preferred TCP server ports for a given service? I presume the documents describing the individual services should define the later.
There are conventions, but as the are registered in the information service, they can change. The conventions could be added as informative text, as you suggest.
As Martin (and Aaron) pointed out - this is an implementation detail. I want to avoid this at all costs. -jason