Discussion regarding issue 48

["Murray, Bryan P." <bryan.murray@hp.com>]

The minutes indicate I have an action item to start an email discussion
to clarify issue 48. This issue was originally raised by Jarek Gawor.

I am not sure whether the original intent is with reference only to
properties that are declared in schema as nillable or if it is about any
property which can possibly have a null value.

As an implementer I can comment on properties that can have a null
value. For instance, in most languages a string can have a non-null
value, can be empty and non-null, and can have a null value. If the
property is not declared as nillible in schema and minOccurs > 0, what
is the correct value to return if the string has a null value? The
choices in this case are 1) return property with no value, 2) don't
return the property at all but don't fault, 3) fault. I don't think we
can return the property with nil=true. My preference is #1 which is the
same if the string has a non-null value that has 0 length.

Another case I can think of that is related to having a null value is a
property that is declared with minOccurs=0 and maxOccurs > 1. This may
sometimes be implemented as an array. What should be done if the array
is null, empty, or non-null and non-empty? It seems to me that if the
array is null no property elements should be returned just as for an
array with no elements, but this is an implementation detail.


If someone has comments about properties that are declared as nillable
in the schema or comments about properties having null values please
reply to the list.

Bryan