SOAP faults are used to indicate error situations that prevent the successful delivery of STAR contents for subsequent parsing and processing. While this specification does not prevent using SOAP faults to communicate business level errors generated by business rules, this specification RECOMMENDS that these types of errors be returned using the proper BOD type such as a ConfirmBOD or the corresponding Acknowledge BOD.

If you send a message that was not successful you may get back a response containing a SOAP fault element which gives you status information, error information, or both. A SOAP Fault is similar to an Exception object in common development platforms in that it conveys information about a problem that prevents further processing. Some STAR-specific SOAP fault codes have been defined for common faults. All STAR implementations must understand these faults and handle them accordingly. Standard SOAP faults should be preferred over custom fault codes, such as when WS-Security or the WS-I Basic Profile define specific faults to be used. Below is a list of common faults that have been defined by STAR. When used, the fault code must be prefixed by “STAR:” and appear as in STAR:Invalid Structure.

Note: When sending a SOAP Fault the HTTP Status code needs to be set to 500, according to the WS-I Basic Profile.

A SOAP Fault object contains the following elements:

Below is an example of a SOAP message carrying a valid Fault element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <soap:Header>
   </soap:Header>
   <soap:Body>
     <soap:Fault>
        <faultcode>soap:Server</faultcode>
        <faultstring>Database server not available.</faultstring>
        <faultactor>http://localhost/WebServices/STAR/STARTransport.asmx</faultactor>
     </soap:Fault>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

SOAP 1.1 defines the following standard fault codes under the SOAP namespace ("http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"):

These fault codes represent classes of errors rather than specific errors. SOAP 1.1 allows extending the fault codes using the period notation, however this practice is discouraged by the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 to avoid the risk of potential name conflicts.

STAR Level 1 Requirement

STAR1009: All STAR Web Services are REQUIRED to understand and handle the STAR Specific SOAP Faults. STAR1010: All STAR soap fault error codes are REQUIRED to be be prefixed with STAR: and the appropriate STAR error code. i.e. STAR:Invalid Structure. STAR1011: All STAR soap fault error codes are REQUIRED to appear in the standard SOAP:Fault block. STAR1012: SOAP Faults are for Critical Processing errors only. Informational or warning errors SHOULD NOT be sent as a SOAP Fault.

Note that some specifications mentioned in this document define their own SOAP faults. For example, WS-Security defines a set of fault codes to address security related errors. These fault codes are described in the WS-Security section and should be used when appropriate.

	STAR Level 1 Requirement
	STAR1014: WS-Security errors must send the appropriate WS-Security SOAP Fault for the authorization being used.