RE: [wss] WSS SwA profile Issue 364

Hi Frederick,

I haven’t seen any substantive discussion of Issue 364 on the mailing list, nor in the minutes of the bi-weekly conference calls, so I am somewhat surprised by the TC’s reversal on this issue as reflected in Draft 17. It seems to me that the language in Draft 17 makes the situation worse – it basically says that unless the node constructing the message has direct knowledge of the processing behavior of every intermediate node, XML attachments cannot be attached and transported as XML. Working under this model, a general-purpose WSS SwA message construction library would have to assume that an intermediary *might* be XML-aware and thus, by default, encode all XML attachments into some opaque format.

Note also that because no *specific* encoding format is required for encapsulated XML attachments, it will be impossible for smart intermediaries that have knowledge about the “XML safeness” of their downstream links to decode the encoded XML attachments. This essentially pushes XML attachment decoding to the ultimate receiving endpoint.

Are details of the TC’s reasoning behind the decision to reject XML canonicalization for signed XML attachments available anywhere? I continue to believe that WSS SwA has a problem if it does not require XML canonicalization of XML attachments and that the language in Draft 16 was the proper way to resolve Issue 364.

Thanks,

--bal

P.S. I note that in the minutes of the 04/19/2005 conference call that John Weiland just sent out, Issue 364 is listed as having been closed during the call. I assume that, given your e-mail of this morning, the minutes are in error and the Issue remains “pending review”.

From: Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com [mailto:Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 2:23 AM
To: wss@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: hlockhar@bea.com
Subject: [wss] WSS SwA profile Issue 364 - close

I believe issue 364 should be closed [1]. It was marked pending at the meeting before last (5 April) and was resolved by reverting to the approach of the Committee Draft, ie. that attachments are not to be XML canonicalized.

I have received no additional feedback since 5 April, so I believe this can be closed on the next call.

If this incorrect please send an email to WSS list before the next call.

regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch
Nokia

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wss/download.php/12309/wss-issues-64.html

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