resolving issue 72: clarification of PutResourcePropertiesDocument operation semantics

["Sedukhin, Igor S" <Igor.Sedukhin@ca.com>]

Responding to my AI [(Igor) Put forward a proposal to resolve issue 72 - how this would be done with respect to the semantics issues etc.]

 

I suggest to define the following semantics for the PutResourcePropertiesDocument operation. The words are precise, so may not be easy to read. Let me know if this needs further clarifications or not.

• rule 1: a resource properties document SHOULD be contained in the Put request, in which case the WS-Resource implementation MUST interpret the request as an update of the resource properties document.
• rule 1.A: the resource properties document contained in the Put request MUST be XML Schema valid.
• rule 1.B: the WS-Resource implementation is free to interpret the resource properties document contained in the Put request in any way it deems necessary for the update to occur.
• rule 1.B.I: if the resource properties document maintaned by the WS-Resource after update is XML Infoset identical to the resource properties document contained in the Put request, then response MUST contain nothing.
• rule 1.B.II: if the resource properties document maintaned by the WS-Resource after update is not XML Infoset identical to the resource properties document contained in the Put request, then response MUST contain the updated resource properties document.
• rule 3: in principle any document MAY be contained in the Put request, in which case the WS-Resource implementation MAY find sufficient information in the request to interpret it as an update of the resource properties document. The response then MUST contain the updated resource properties document. This behaviour is implementation specific.

Note that rule 3 is covering the case where the resource properties document submitted in Put request in not XML Schema valid (e.g. a partial document with some required properties omitted). The rule 1.B.I is covering the case where the document is valid, but may fill the values that are assigned by the WS-Resource implementation e.g. IDs, static values, default values, calculated values, transient values, etc. Either way it is up to the implementation to interpret Put, however, I believe, it is sufficiently interoperable if the client can count on these rules to be in effect.

-- Igor Sedukhin .. (igor.sedukhin@ca.com)
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