[ws-dd] Outline for DPWS Design Guide

[Dan Driscoll <Dan.Driscoll@microsoft.com>]

Hi everybody-

At our recent face-to-face meeting, we discussed providing an outline for each of the whitepapers.  Here’s the outline for the paper I’m working on, the DPWS Design Guide.

 

The DPWS Design Guide is a set of documents for authors of specifications built on DPWS.  It is intended for individual protocol authors creating their own solutions, and for committees and standards bodies creating open protocols.

 

The guide is split into two parts:

1)      The DPWS Design Guide, which contains explanations and provides recommendations.  This part is divided into three sections:

a.       Section 1: Protocol Design describes the process of defining an abstract conceptual model for a protocol.  This section provides a brief overview of the DPWS model, details the tools available in DPWS that can be used in another specification, and then recommends how to best structure services, operations, and messages to achieve those goals.  Subsections for eventing (+filtering), attachments, extensibility, and device/service types are included.

b.      Section 2: Creating a specification on DPWS builds on the prior section and describes how to structure normative text to clearly and concisely reference DPWS and build on it.  This section includes subsections on the relationship between text and WSDL/XSD, normative references, the options in choosing standardization bodies, and in choosing appropriate namespaces.

c.       Section 3: Creating a WSDL/XSD provides a set of easy-to-follow concrete steps to transform an abstract protocol definition into a WSDL and XSD.

2)      An example specification, which illustrates the concepts in the design guide and which includes annotations to explain complex concepts.

 

The design guide may be read alone or in tandem with the example spec; the example spec is best with the design guide and doesn’t really work on its own.  Both documents rely on a basic working understanding of DPWS concepts, and will reference the other ancillary materials as prerequisite reading (e.g., executive whitepaper) or as informative references (implementation guide).

 

Neither the design guide nor the example spec discuss implementation details, except for notes to be cognizant of implementation limitations when designing protocols.

 

Comments and questions are welcome.

 

Thanks

--D