Issue: wsrf-WS-BaseFaults OriginatorReference innested faults is ambiguous

[katy_warr@uk.ibm.com]

Please could we have a new issue?:

Description:

Usage of the OriginatorReference in the wsrf-WS-BaseFaults spec is ambiguous when BFs are nested.  It is unclear whether the OriginatorReference refers to the originator of of the outer-most fault or to the initial originator of the fault.

Proposed Solution:

Proposal 1:

If the OriginatorReference refers to the initial originator fault, the description should be updated to make this clear.  Something like: 

"This OPTIONAL element is a WS-Addressing [WS-Addressing] EndpointReference of the Web service that *initiated the condition* that resulted in this fault..............One use of this element is in a situation of nested faults.  The outer-most fault may use this component to reference the actual original source of the fault condition.".
(Changed text between *s)

This solution implies that in a chain of BFs each BF element would replicate information available in the nested BF.

Proposal 2:

If the OriginatorReference refers to the originator of the outer-most fault, the text could be replaced with something like:

"This OPTIONAL element is a WS-Addressing [WS-Addressing] EndpointReference of the Web service that generated the fault.............One use of this element is in a situation of nested faults.  The *inner-most* fault may use this component to reference the actual original source of the fault condition."
(I.e. Same text as now but 'inner-most' rather than 'outer-most').

I favour proposal 2 because:
1. Recipients of the fault would be able to deduce the fault path history - a bit like a stack trace by looking at the nested fault information.  Is this useful?  If not, (as suggested by Ian), we could recommend that outer BFs should typically NOT use this element and for it to be used only by the inner-most BF.
2. Other components of the fault (e.g. ErrCode) refer to the outermost element and not to the inner most element. Using a different semantics for OriginatorReference is inconsistent.