Re: [regrep] PROPOSAL: More flexible ObjectRef

["David RR Webber" <david@drrw.info>]

Farrukh,

+1 - *yes* - that's exactly why the lid and UID concept
is so powerful in resolving this.

If you omit the sub-version information on the UID
look-up it defaults to the "latest" by default.

If you want a specific sub-version - then you can
address that directly - using the suffix mechanism
to denote the child you wish to explicitly get.

See the CAM specification of course for more
details (sorry could not resist - LOL!).

Thanks, DW

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Farrukh Najmi" <Farrukh.Najmi@Sun.COM>
To: "Matthew MacKenzie" <mattm@adobe.com>
Cc: <regrep@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 6:33 PM
Subject: Re: [regrep] PROPOSAL: More flexible ObjectRef


> Matthew MacKenzie wrote:
>
> > Group,
> >
> > The current Registry object reference mechanism as defined by the RIM
> > ObjectRef class is too rigid when it comes to use cases that involve
> > object versioning. The current ObjectRef mechanism allows a specific
> > version of one object to reference a specific version of another
> > object. However, it does not allow a version of one object to
> > reference say the "latest" or "latest approved" version of another
> > object.
> >
> > There are many use cases where this would be desirable, for example:
> >
> > CompanyA publishes a "form" to the registry. The form is actually a
> > RegistryPackage containing an XML file, and some resources (images,
> > sounds, video, ...). In some cases, I do not want to automatically
> > inherit changes to constituent objects, so in those cases, I would
> > create HasMember references to specific versions of the objects to my
> > package members. In other cases, I want to automatically upgrade all
> > forms (for example, company logo change) and reference the latest
> > version of all member objects.
>
> +1 on the need to support more flexible ObjectReferences. The concept of
> late binding comes to mind here from OO programming.
>
> > My proposal is to add a new logical id attribute to the set of
> > registry versioning attributes, and otherwise improving ObjectRef to
> > allow selection of a particular version of an object.
>
> +1 on being able to reference a logical object in a version independent
> manner.
>
> This is exactly what the lid attribute is for in the versioning spec
> being added to version 2.6.
>
> I think that the use case you raise can (and should) be addressed very
> easily by extending the ObjectRef class to have a choice of:
>
> a) a static "hard-wired" reference to a specific version of a specific
> object (current capability)
>
> b) a dynamic "late-binding" reference to a logical object which is
> determined at run-time (de-refence time).
> I could see this being done via a second attribute named "dynamic". When
> dynamic is false (default) the registry
> assumes that the id attribute references the referenced object. When
> dynamic is true, the registry assumes that the id attribute MUST be to a
> stored query that dynamically determines the referenced objects.
>
> This is a very powerful concept. Thanks Matt for seeding this idea. I
> hope we can discuss this over email prior to next telecon. Thanks.
>
> -- 
> Regards,
> Farrukh
>
>
>
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