RE: [ws-caf] Mt Everest and WS-CF

["Jim Webber" <Jim.Webber@newcastle.ac.uk>]

Peter:

> I see from our server logs that you have been using our 
> aestivation and quadration web services, in accordance with 
> our agreements and the published interface definitions.
> 
> As you are obviously aware, our services support WS-Context, 
> and I see that you include a WS-Context header in the SOAP 
> messages you send us. These headers have ctx:context-type URI 
> of http://jim.webber.name/conjoint123. We are quite happy to 
> accept SOAP messages with this context, but we are not sure 
> what effect you intend this to have, since we do not have any 
> information about what processing is required for  
> http://jim.webber.name/conjoint123. Our services are highly 
> configurable and extensible, so I'm sure we will be able to 
> enhance our services to support your needs, but we do need to 
> know what we are supposed to do with the context. Do you just 
> wish us to record the activity identifier in our service logs 
> ? Do you want your itemised bill to include the identifier ? 
> Should our systems be invoking operations on the context 
> service identified in the context ? Or are your expectations 
> of our behaviour covered entirely by the mustUnderstand and 
> mustPropagate flags.
> 
> I gather that some assert that placing a WS-Contet value 
> indicates that the operation invocations are part of the 
> activity identified in the context. This is may be very nice, 
> but our services make no use of this indication, and can make 
> no use of it without some further definition of their 
> expected behaviour.

What a highly original and amusing way to make a point. I propose this
be known as the Furniss Gambit in all future TCs :-)

Anyway in the spirit that it was sent, I will answer:


----
Dear Service Provider,

I have no idea what you will do with the contexts that I send you,
perhaps like me you will use them to correlate messages that happen in
the same activity (a distributed session). I will leave that for you to
decide.

However since you correctly implement the mustPropagate parts of the
specification I do not require anything further from you.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. J. Webber

PS - the context type that I am using is not the one you identify, it is
in the namespace
http://www.webservicestransactions.org/schemas/wsas/2003/03

PPS - I am using an old version of the spec :-)

----

The point here is that I perceive value in the standardisation of
mustPropagate and unique context id since they immediately enable me to
do message correlation in a standard way. 

I therefore would take the side of preserving WS-Context as being useful
in its own right.

Jim
--
http://jim.webber.name