Issue 106 - Requirement for the use of SOAP and the location of aCoordinationContext in a message in unclear

[Ram Jeyaraman <Ram.Jeyaraman@microsoft.com>]

This issue is identified as 106.

Please use the subject line for future correspondence on this issue: "Issue 106 - Requirement for the use of SOAP and the location of a CoordinationContext in a message in unclear".

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Wilkinson3 [mailto:awilkinson@uk.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 7:48 AM
To: ws-tx@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [ws-tx] NEW Issue - Requirement for the use of SOAP and the location of a CoordinationContext in a message in unclear

Protocol: AT and BA

Artifact:  Specs

Draft:  AT PR-01 and BA CD-03

Link to the documents referenced:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-tx/wstx-wsat-1.1-spec-pr-01.pdf
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/ws-tx/download.php/20776/wstx-wsba-1.1-spec-cd-03.pdf

Issue type: Design

Issue description:

At present the only place within the AT and BA specs where a statement is
made about the use of SOAP w.r.t propagating a CoordinationContext and the
location of that context within a message is in section 4.2 of both
specifications during the discussion of WS-Policy assertions. In this
section in both specs it's stated that in the presence of an ATAsseration,
AtomicOutcomeAssertion, or MixedOutcomeAssertion that:

"The transaction MUST be represented as a SOAP header in
CoordinationContext format, as defined in WS-Coordination [WSCOOR]." (AT
279-280, BA 386-387 and 399-400).

Without any further statement elsewhere in the specs on the use of SOAP to
propagate a CoordinationContext or on the location of such a context in a
message it could reasonably be inferred that when a policy assertion is
present SOAP MUST be used and the CoordinationContext MUST be placed in
the SOAP header but when such an assertion is not present the use of SOAP
is optional and, irrespective of the use of SOAP, the context may be
placed anywhere in the message.

Proposed resolution:

To resolve this I propose that a precise statement is made about the
required location of a CoordinationContext within a message in section 2
of each specification. Lines 145-146 in the AT spec would be modified to
read:

"The Atomic Transaction coordination context flows in application messages
involved with the transaction and MUST be represented in
CoordinationContext format as described in WS-Coordination [WSCOOR]. For
application messages that use a SOAP binding the CoordinationContext MUST
flow in the SOAP header of the message."

Lines 179-180 in the BA spec would be modified to read:

"The Business Activity coordination context flows in application messages
involved with the transaction and MUST be represented in
CoordinationContext format as described in WS-Coordination [WSCOOR]. For
application messages that use a SOAP binding the CoordinationContext MUST
flow in the SOAP header of the message."

In addition to the above changes the description of the three policy
assertions should also be amended. I believe there are two alternatives
here:

a) Modify the assertions to state the requirements more clearly:

AT lines 279-280 - final sentence of the description:

The transaction MUST be represented in CoordinationContext format, as
defined in WS-Coordination [WSCOOR]. For application messages that use a
SOAP binding the CoordinationContext MUST flow in the SOAP header of the
message.
BA lines 386-387, and 399-400 - final sentence of each description:
The transaction MUST be represented in CoordinationContext format, as
defined in WS-Coordination [WSCOOR]. For application messages that use a
SOAP binding the CoordinationContext MUST flow in the SOAP header of the
message.
b) Remove the final sentence from each of the three descriptions (AT
279-280, BA 386-387 and 399-400) as this is now specified in section 2.