RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2

[Jacques Durand <JDurand@us.fujitsu.com>]

I believe we can't avoid talking about DA at some point, when defining the ultimate problems we solve...

 

The fact is, the protocol - regardless on how independent we want its *operation* to be from DA concerns - is ultimately serving the DAs. Even if the TC decides that the protocol must have a life on its own (I am not saying I am a big fan of this), the value of every feature in it depends on how well it serves the DAs.

 

The way I see it, the Ack mechanism is not just serving a resending protocol mechanism (which itself serves AtLeastOnce), but it is also serving the raising of errors - delivery failures - on the proper endpoint (an other aspect of AtLeastOnce).

A lack of accuracy in the acknowledgement mechanism will affect this error raising and affect the related DA, here AtLeastOnce. Issues i019 and i028 have been only pointing at the protocol shortcomings here, though there is the DA concern I just described behind it.

 

Now, on a more touchy subject, DA continuity through sequence transition is another issue that has not been clearly stated from the start although extensively alluded to in this thread, and I would argue that it is within scope of this TC to *enable* continuity of DA, if not to prescribe how to resolve it.  DA definitions in WS-RM actually never scope these DAs to an arbitrary set of message e.g. by saying : "within the scope of a sequence". The notion of "sequence" appears to just be a means to an end, an arbitrary scoping of protocol behavior. Since sequences may be terminated for diverse reasons, it is legitimate to worry about the continuity of DA support across sequences. It is clear to me that a pre-condition to this continuity (regardless of how it is implemented, which we may want to remain out of specification scope), is that the protocol enforces clean termination of sequences and accurate status. This is again what the proposal to i019 and i028 supports.

 

Regards,

Jacques

 

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From: Giovanni Boschi [mailto:gboschi@sonicsoftware.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 6:46 AM
To: Doug Davis; ws-rx@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2

 

Two <GB> Inline comments below.  At this point I feel we are proposing to significantly complicate the protocol, without solving any clearly identifiable problem.

 

Regards,

G.

 

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From: Doug Davis [mailto:dug@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 8:43 PM
To: ws-rx@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2

 

Lei,
  Yes that is true.  So there are two thing here: 1) the proposal doesn't say why the RMS is closing the sequence nor does it say what it will use the final ACK state for.

<GB> At least when we started, there was an actual problem we were trying to solve.  Now it sounds like the proposal doesn't solve it, but we like the proposal anyway for some other reason, and what I'm reading is that this is all OK as long as we are careful not to suggest that the proposal solves any particular problem.

 

This is very important.  It purposely does not get into that area because, as others have stated, things like linking of sequence should probably be done by some higher level processing, which is out of scope (as of now anyway).  

<GB>  Forget linking of seqences.  From the language in proposal 3,  ("After line 396, ...")  "...this would leave the RM source unsure of the final ranges of messages that were delivered to the destination".  Please explain how, without knowledge of the destination DA, this problem isn't still there.  Please don't tell me it doesn't matter, or that we'll deal with it later, in a separate issue, because I don't know if we will or not;  We will be asked to consider this proposal on its own, and decide if it solves the problem.  At this point I have to conclude that it does not.

And  2) this problem exists for other areas of the spec, not just this proposal.  Let's say the an RMS reaches the MaxMessageNumber, as defined by the RMD.  The way to resolve this is to create a new sequence to continue - well how can we guarantee the ordering will be preserved across the sequences?  Same problem.  So this proposal does not introduce a new problem, the problem is already there.  However, that being said, and even though several people have said that doing things like preserving the order across sequences is something for a higher-level processing, I do personally believe that the spec should provide an aide to that processing.  But I view that as a separate issue and not part of this one.
thanks
-Doug

"Lei Jin" <ljin@bea.com>

08/30/2005 08:15 PM

To	<ws-rx@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2

 

Let's assume we are using an in-order delivery assurance.  I am sending 10 messages from AS to AD, and after some time, I decide to send a <close> for which I receive a final ack with (1 - 5).
 
If I understand correctly, one of the motivations for having a final ack is so that you know the accurate state of all the received messages, so that you can decide what to resend later in a new sequence.  So let's say we start up a new reliable sequence and resends messages 6 - 10.  However, here is a problem.  How do I preserve the in-order delivery assurance?  How do I guarantee that message 6 will be delivered after message 5.  Note that the final ack only says (1 - 5) is received, not delivered.  It's perfectly reasonable if message 5 is not delivered by the time another sequence is set up and message 6 arrives.  In that case, are we going to have to worry about delivery assurances across multiple sequences?
 
Lei
 
 
 -----Original Message-----
From: Doug Davis [mailto:dug@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 12:08 PM
To: ws-rx@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2


Yet more comments. :-)
-Doug

"Stefan Batres" <stefanba@microsoft.com>

08/30/2005 03:35 PM

 

To	Doug Davis/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, <ws-rx@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	RE: [ws-rx] i0019 - a formal proposal - take 2

 

Doug,
 
Some more comments and thoughts on your proposal:
 
 
<dug>... When or why an RMS uses CloseSequence is up to it to decide.
All we know is that it wants to shut things down and get an accurate ACK from the RMD.</dug>
 
I still have not heard of a plausible reason why an RMS "wants to shut things down" and the current spec presents a problem. Comparing the spec as it stands today vs. the spec + this proposal:
 

• TODAY: RMS wants to end the sequence so it sends a LastMessage and must wait for a complete set of acks; this might require retransmitting messages. Once a full set of acks is received RMS sends TerminateSequence.

 

• TODAY + THIS PROPOSAL: RMS wants to end the sequence so it sends Close, waits for a CloseResponse, possibly retransmitting the Close. Once a CloseResponse is received RMS sends TerminateSequence.

 
The problem with the TODAY scenario, as I've heard it in this forum, is that the RMS might have to wait unacceptably long between sending LastMessage and getting a full ack range. But if getting some messages or acks across proves difficult; why would the RMS expect that getting Close across would be any easier?

<dug> 1 - I don't believe your text is accurate in that Close is supposed to be used in cases where the sequence needs to end due to something going wrong.  You've described a case where the sequence is functioning just fine - and while Close can be used in those cases as well, it provides no additional value.  2- Sending a Close and sending application data can have quite a different set of features executed so I don't think its hard to imagine cases where RM messages can get processed just fine but application messages run into problems.  I believe Chris mentioned on some call the notion of two different persistent stores - one for RM data and one for app-data.  Its possible that the app-data one is running into problems.  3 - Using the CloseSequence operation is option - if you feel that, as an RMS implementor, you'll never see its usefulness then you're free to never implement/send it.  However, I'd hate remove this option for those of us who do see value in it.  </dug>



 
<dug>The case that I keep thinking about is one where the RMD is actually a cluster of machines and when a sequence gets created it has an affinity to a certain server in the cluster - meaning it processes all of the messages for that sequence. If that server starts to have problems, and for some reason it just can't seem to process any new app messages then the RMS can close down the sequence and start up a new one. Hopefully, the new sequence will be directed to a different server in the cluster. </dug>
 
There are two problems with this scenario and the proposed solution.
1.      If an RMD has sequence-to-machine affinity that should be strictly the RMDs decision and the RMDs problem. The RMS is autonomous; this proposal puts expectations on the RMS' behavior based on particularities of the RMD implementation. To be clear, I'll note that affinity can be achieved in two ways:
                                                       i.            By performing stateful routing at the RMD; basically the RMD has to remember every active sequence and what machine it has affinity to. In this case it would be simple to change the RMD's routing table when a machine fails.
                                                      ii.            By generating different EPR's for each machine. For affinity to function this way two things are necessary:
1.      Some sort of endpoint resolution mechanism would have to be devised for the RMS to learn the EPR that it should target.
2.      A mechanism for migrating that EPR.

Clearly 1) and 2) are outside the scope of the TC and, in my view, this proposal might be defining 2) in an informal way that is specific to WS-RM.

2.      If the RMS somehow guesses that there is a problem on the EPR to which it is sending its messages and somehow decides that Closing the sequence and starting a new one is the right course of action, ordering guarantees are compromised.

<dug> I probably didn't state the problem very well.  I didn't intend to claim that the RMS knew about this affinity, but instead it knew that something was wrong with the current sequence and in order to try to fix the situation it decided to try another sequence.  The affinity bit was thrown in there to explain why starting a new sequence _might_ fix the problem.

I should also point out that while a lot of these discussions have focused on InOrder+ExactlyOnce DA, this feature is still useful in other DAs.  For example, if the DA is just ExactlyOnce - having an accurate accounting of the ACKs allows a subsequent sequence to send just the gaps from the first, so getting an accurate list of the gaps becomes critical.  And this of course leads us to the discussion of how to determine the DA in use - which I think might be part of issues 6, 9, 24 and 27.
</dug>
 
Finally, I agree with you that considering a gap-filling mechanism would be a good thing for this TC to do.
 
 
--Stefan