Application specific metadata in SOAP header

Question

Do you think its a good idea to put our application specific metadata in the SOAP header?

E.g. In our organization, we want to track each message as it passes through various services, I want to track service path (just like TCP) to know which all services processed the message etc. For all this, currently we are defining our own message format (that has header and body) over SOAP message.

I want to get your opinion on whether this is a good idea or should I put my application metadata in the SOAP header itself.

Thanks Manju

Answer 1

Put your application metadata in the SOAP header - otherwise you're supporting both your own private envelope format as well as the SOAP format, for no particular advantage.

Is your metadata large? That might be one reason to leave it out of the soap headers.