There's actually more to it than that, at one level higher of
transparency:

The biggest advantage of WS-Addressing (and any spec that covers this
general area) is that one is not tied to one particular mechanism for
specifiying this type of information in - for example, SOAP. Rather,
these mechanisms, if employed, can help "future-proof" an implementation
by enabling the addressing and endpoint identification capabilities to
hold, no matter what transport mechanisms may be used in the future. 

Kind Regards,
Joe Chiusano
Booz Allen Hamilton
Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World

Mark Baker wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 08:51:29AM -0400, Chiusano Joseph wrote:
> > For those interested in the Web Services specifications/standards
> > landscape:
> >
> > It was just announced that the WS-Addressing specification has been
> > submitted to W3C[1].
> >
> > Also, somewhat surprisingly given the "vendor dynamics" on such
> > specifications: The authors include not only Microsoft, IBM, BEA, and
> > SAP, but...Sun Microsystems.
> 
> It's certainly good to see everybody working together, but it's
> unfortunate that it's on yet another WS-* spec with very few redeeming
> qualities.  Ok, maybe parts of sections 3 and 4 have some value, but its
> raison d'etre, section 2, is IMO entirely unnecessary (and worse,
> actively harmful).  URIs are perfectly adequate as message endpoint
> references; nothing more is needed.
> 
> Mark.

-- 
Kind Regards,
Joseph Chiusano
Associate
Booz Allen Hamilton