Re:[Issues 3 & 4] -- possible unifying resolution

[Fred Carter <fred.carter@amberpoint.com>]

Issues 3 & 4 both refer to cases where one of the forms of GetProperties 
  is requested for an element/property not currently present.  The 
issues specifically question whether a fault vs. empty document is the 
proper response.

Suppose that we add solve this as follows.

First, by fiat, we declare that some namespace is reserved within 
properties document.  This "administrative" namespace is used to return 
[dare I say it] meta-properties, information about the document or request.

Second, we define the first "meta-property" as
     <wsrfa:ElementsNotReturned xmlns:wsrfa="that NS I mentioned above"/>

This meta-property would contain the list of QNames of those elements 
which were requested by are not present in the document.

Using such a mechanism allows a caller to validate their requested list 
against the returned message, which is [apparently, by virtue of our 
consideration of a fault in this case] easier than "diffing" the 
returned list against the one they sent.

I think this treads a middle ground, yet allows the two issues to be 
resolved in a consistent manner.

I'm not sure how to resolve the "it's not a fault" resolution of issue 3 
with the "if I mispell things, I want to know" spirit of the proposed 
resolution of issue 4.  As to issue 4, I'm not sure how to tell when to 
return empty vs. fault.  This type of resolution solves both things in a 
consistent fashion.

Alternatives certainly encouraged...

/fred
-- 
Fred Carter / AmberPoint, Inc.

mailto:fred.carter@amberpoint.com
tel:+1.510.433.6525 fax:+1.510.663.6301