Re: [wsrp-wsia] [I#106] Uniqueness of entityHandles

[Michael Freedman <Michael.Freedman@oracle.com>]

I believe that
   (a) entity handles MUST be unique -- I.e. an entity handle MUST only refer to a single persistent state.
   (b) cloneEntity MUST be able to return an identical entity handle.

I believe (b) not for the reasons currently discussed -- for if these were the only arguments I would agree with Rich that this is better represented as an error condition.  Rather, I come to (b) reluctantly as a consequence of our [ill-fated?] decision to merge entity handles and session handles
into refHandles.  In doing so, the point of cloneEntity is no longer just to clone the persistent state of the entity.  cloneEntity also clones the runtime/session state.  In a world where it seems perfectly reasonable to expect immutable entities that have runtime state, cloneEntity MUST be capable
of returning the same entityHandle but a new/cloned refHandle for those consumers wanting to preserve the runtime state on copy.

This leads to a further ugly observation that cloneEntity logically no longer belongs in the optional Entity factor but rather in the required core factor.  I.e. since refHandles aren't immutable and they come into existence in our core factor they should be clonable in the core factor (ala Gils
observation for releaseRefHandle).

For me this is getting clumsy and confusing.  We may want to rethink our approach to refHandles.
    -Mike-