Issue 194: Faults for uninitialized partnerLinks

["Tony Fletcher" <tony_fletcher@btopenworld.com>]

Title: Message

 

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 Issue 194: Faults for uninitialized partnerLinks

Status: received
Date added: 4 Mar 2005
Categories: Partner Links
Date submitted: 04 March 2005
Submitter: Yaron Y. Goland
Description: Thanks to Alexandre Alves of BEA for pointing this problem out.

What happens if someone tries to do an invoke or a receive on a partnerLink that doesn't have an initialized EPR?

An interesting question is - can such errors ever happen? As I argue below I believe the answer is yes.

In the case of receive the answer would seem to be no. Only the engine can set myRole EPRs so it's reasonable to assume that the engine will set all EPRs.

But one wonders.

For example, what if an administrator sets up their server (using a mechanism completely outside of BPEL) to say 'myRole in partnerLink PLA should be set to the same value as myRole in partnerLink PLB' and then at run time PLB never actually gets set because it's never used? Such an error could only be statically determined using pessimistic analysis which we have generally stayed away from. So it is at least theoretically possible for a myRole to be uninitialized at run time. What's interesting though is that this is a server and not a programmer error but it's an error nevertheless.

In the case of invoke the answer is more likely to be yes, the error can happen. If we assume that static analysis occurs before binding then clearly one can end up in situations where the code was written to rely on a binding that could set EPRs and instead ended up deployed on one that didn't. Similarly even if static analysis occurs after binding we still have a problem because if the binding doesn't set EPRs and the program is required to manually set them we still end up with the pessimistic analysis problem. That is, the only way we can be sure that a BPEL using a non-EPR setting binding won't fault out on an uninitialized partnerRole on an invoke is if we use pessimistic static analysis.
Submitter’s proposal: Introduce a bpws:uninitializedPartnerRole fault.
Changes: 4 Mar 2005 - new issue

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 Best Regards,

Tony                          

	Tony Fletcher Technical Advisor Choreology Ltd. 68, Lombard Street, London EC3V 9L J   UK
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