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Subject: RE: [wsbpel] Issue - 118 - When are Correlation Sets Mandatory?
Singletons are not a concept supported by the current specification. The current assumption is that a process always operates through instances and therefore message-instance correlation must be specified for all inbound messages, (optionally) except for the one that instantiates the process. I have not seen any compelling argument for supporting singletons. Can somebody post a potential canonical example? -----Original Message----- From: Ugo Corda [mailto:UCorda@SeeBeyond.com] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 9:00 AM To: Satish Thatte; ygoland@bea.com; Maciej Szefler Cc: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org Subject: RE: [wsbpel] Issue - 118 - When are Correlation Sets Mandatory? Please see my answers below. Ugo > -----Original Message----- > From: Satish Thatte [mailto:satisht@microsoft.com] > Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 7:33 AM > To: Ugo Corda; ygoland@bea.com; Maciej Szefler > Cc: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: RE: [wsbpel] Issue - 118 - When are Correlation Sets > Mandatory? > > > OK, by now I am lost so I will respond here, just to clarify > what the current spec was meant to say. > > 1. As Yaron said in the issue def, the current assumption is > that all correlation must be explicit. However it is not > true that all correlation must be specified by correlation > sets. The exception is responses in synchronous operations. > The assumption for synchronous ops is that the infrastructure > will correlate request and response in both inbound and > outbound cases. I now see where the term "synchronous" came for in the BPEL spec. As I already mentioned, the use of the term with that meaning is quite unusual, and prone to generate confusion. A different term should be adopted (and I think you already agree with that modification). > Thus the response is always properly > correlated to the request by definition, but a request to an > existing instance must be correlated by a cset. Not if you are dealing with a singleton. In that case, any new request has only one place to go. > All this > regardless of the nature of the transport binding. Of course > a response may carry a cset, usually to initiate it (see > below for the pizza example). > > 2. For a start activity, there is no requirement to have an > inbound correlation set specified. There are two cases of > correlation establishment for start activities. Case 1: The > cset is specified by the message that starts a new instance. > Case 2: The cset is created by the instance. In Case 2, the > typical pattern is that the start activity will be > synchronous and the response will initiate the cset -- in > Maciej's pizza case, the instance would create the "order > number" that is later used to let the customer know that the > order is ready. The alternative is Case 1 -- the customer > gives his/her (hopefully unique) name in the inbound start > message and then that is used to inform the customer about > the order completion. In my experience these are exactly the > two alternatives used by real Pizza parlors. Note that Case > 2 takes advantage of the implicit correlation of responses > discussed in Point 1 above. You seem to imply here that a cset is always there (even though it might not be initialized at start). But, according to your point 1, I should be able to have cases that are neither case 1 nor case 2 (i.e. no cset is even defined throughout the process). Could you please clarify? > > Does that sound more consistent? > > Satish > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ugo Corda [mailto:UCorda@SeeBeyond.com] > Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 6:09 PM > To: ygoland@bea.com; Maciej Szefler > Cc: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org > Subject: RE: [wsbpel] Issue - 118 - When are Correlation Sets > Mandatory? > > > this is not clearly spelled out one way or another in the spec. > > I agree. I think the problem with synchronous vs. > asynchronous in the BPEL spec is that the terms are used > somewhat differently than their usual meaning in the context > of request-response MEPs. > > Usually people think of a synchronous request-response as one > where the client has to wait for the response, and an > asynchronous request-response as one where the client can do > other things between the request and the response. (I am > aware that some people have other understanding of the terms, > as I learned after countless discussions on this subject in > the W3C Web Services Architecture WG, but I think this is the > most common understanding). > > In the case of BPEL, the term synchronous makes sense in the > case of a request-response <invoke>. The BPEL process > instance (the client) actually waits until the response comes > back. That is true regardless of whether the transport > binding is synchronous or not. > > But in the case of a BPEL <receive>/<reply> the term > synchronous seems to make much less sense. It is true that, > given a synchronous transport binding, the client (i.e. the > Web service interacting with the process) would have to wait > until it gets the response from the process. But as soon as > the transport binding is asynchronous, this assumption is not > valid any more. For instance, a JAX-RPC 2.0 client can issue > a request against a BPEL/WSDL request-response port, then > happily start some other activities, and finally receive the > BPEL response on a different thread. > > So my understanding of the use of the terms synchronous and > asynchronous in the BPEL spec is that it made sense at the > time a WSDL request-response port implied a synchronous > transport. (Even though WSDL does not require that, it is > what implementations have been supporting so far). As > implementations evolve to support asynchronous transport > bindings, I think the current BPEL terminology makes much less sense. > > Ugo > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Yaron Y. Goland [mailto:ygoland@bea.com] > > Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 2:27 PM > > To: Maciej Szefler > > Cc: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org > > Subject: Re: [wsbpel] Issue - 118 - When are Correlation Sets > > Mandatory? > > > > > > See below > > > > Maciej Szefler wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Yaron, > > > > > > On Thu, 2004-04-15 at 12:58, ws-bpel issues list editor wrote: > > > > > > > Normative Change - The schemas for pick and receive make > > > correlation > sets optional. That would appear to be wrong. > > > > This change would preclude start activities without a > > correlation set; > > > for example if every time I get a message on some port I > > want to start a > > > new process but there is nothing unique in the received > message (the > > > operation may have an input message with no unique parts). > > To make this > > > more concrete, if I have a process for making pizza's, I > > might want the > > > makePizza(toppings) operation start the process. In this > > case there is > > > nothing in the makePizza input message to uniquely > identify the new > > > pizza process (topping not being unique), so there is nothing to > > > initiate a correlation set with. This is explictly allowed > > in the spec > > > in sec 6.5: > > > > > > "If exactly one start activity is expected to > > instantiate the > > > process, > > > the use of correlation sets is unconstrained. This includes > > a pick with > > > multiple onMessage branches; each such branch can use different > > > correlation sets or no correlation sets." > > > > > > Are you of the opinion that such usage should not be permitted? > > > > > > > There had to be some sort of correlation or the message would > > never have > > reached the BPEL instance in the first place. For the scenario you > > describe I would recommend Issue 96, engine managed > > correlation. In this > > case the 'correlation' is just the URI assigned to the > > process instance. > > This would fully support the scenario you describe but be > consistent > > with our correlation model. > > > > Another possibility is to specify the absence of a > correlation set as > > meaning that correlation is being handled by the engine but > > that leads > > to ambiguities (which seems to be my theme for this week). > > For example, > > if I specify a single correlation set then did I meant to do > > correlation > > exclusively on that correlation set or on a combination of the > > correlation set and some unspecified machine specific > > correlation mechanism? > > > > Still, as ambiguities go I think I might be able to live with > > this one. > > I really need to noodle on our correlation set model some > > more. It just > > seems a big, clunky. The whole start activities mess is > > another symptom > > of the clunkiness. > > > > > > > > > Also note, that the WSDL 1.1 spec quite clearly states that > > > > request/responses do not have to be sent over synchronous > > transports > > > > so there may be values we could use for correlation sets. > > In other > > > > words, the situation is inconsistent. In some cases a > > > request/response > uses a synchronous transport and in > > other cases it > > > could be using an > asynchronous transport with some > message based > > > correlation. Do we want > to distinguish these cases or do > > we want to > > > just say that we presume > that any time a > > request/response pattern > > > is used there is some > correlation mechanism implicitly > > known to the > > > engine and therefore > correlation sets are always > optional on the > > > incoming message? Reply > the same issue as responses on > > invokes. > > > > Changes: 15 Apr 2004 - new issue The transport being > > asynchronous is > > > an irrelevant implementation detail (at least as far as the BPEL > > > language is concerned): the fact that the operation is declared > > > synchronous means that the transport (not the > > > engine) has some (transport-specicific) means of matching up the > > > response to the request. For the simple HTTP case this is > > simple: the > > > response is received on the same socket. For an > > asynchronous transport > > > like JMS, something like the correlationId property of the > > JMS message > > > would need to be used match up the response to the request; the > > > setting and interperetation of such a property would need to be a > > > feature of the JMS protocol binding. This applies to both in the > > > invoke case and the receive/reply case. > > > > > > -Maciej > > > > > > > I happen to agree with you but this is not clearly spelled > > out one way > > or another in the spec. > > > > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from > > the roster > > > of > > > the OASIS TC), go to > > > > > http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsbpel/members/le > ave_workgroup.php. > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from > the roster of the OASIS TC), go to > http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsbpel/members/le ave_workgr oup.php. To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of the OASIS TC), go to http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsbpel/members/leave_workgr oup.php.
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