RE: [business-transaction] Groups - BT-TC-FAQ.txt uploaded

["William Z Pope" <zpope@pobox.com>]

Hi Doug,
Firstly thanks for the comments.

Your are right this document is slightly out of date.  In early August
OASIS solicited the TC chairs for FAQ documents.  This is the document
that I sent them at that point.  There was some problem getting it up on
the TC page so I resent the document to OASIS staff and made it visible
as a TC document too.

You do raise a larger point.  This should be a document that has been
reviewed and voted by the TC.  I would like to have something up on
the web page,  perhaps this document with edits?  I am happy to make
those edits and circulate a draft for comment.

More comments embedded in-line below.

=bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug.Bunting@Sun.COM [mailto:Doug.Bunting@Sun.COM]
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 7:48 PM
To: zpope@pobox.com
Cc: business-transaction@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [business-transaction] Groups - BT-TC-FAQ.txt uploaded


> Bill,
>
> This document seems slightly out of date and does not seem to have been
> discussed previously.  When was it accepted by the group?  It surprises
> me to see this new version appear as our public FAQ [1].
>
> I am wondering in particular about the last two questions and answers:
>
> 4. How does this work compare with related efforts at other standards
> organizations?
>
>     There is currently no comparable work in other standards
>     organisations.
>     There are two known proprietary sets of specifications for
>     transactional
>     web services but these do not encompass protocols other than the web.
>
> Really?  Why has this list recently been discussing the overlap with
> WS-C+AT and WS-CAF recently?

Right, absolutely.  I have had emails requesting that WS-C+T (or AT),
WS-CAF, and BPSS be called out.  Any others?

> Is it the consensus of the group that covering more than web services
> (not just the web as in HTTP) is an important value add in BTP?

It was discussed at both the Liberty Corner face-to-face and the
Newcastle face-to-face.  There was concensus, though not 100%
agreement, that this was an important value add.

>     BTP uses two-phase interaction of which all other transactional
>     interactions are a degenerate form.  This two-phase capability
>     can be collapsed into simpler interactions when interaction
>     delays are more important than transactional visibility or control.
>
>     The business transaction protocol provides transactions independently
>     of the protocol used to carry application semantics.   BTP
>     defines the abstract messages, message semantics, and a concrete
>     binding.
>
>     BTP addresses the issues of transactionality within and across
>     entity boundries.  It defines only a small set of obligations
>     for the service invoker and the service provider.   The service
>     provider is free to choose appropriate cancellation or recovery
>     semantics.
>
> Most of the above three paragraphs seems related to earlier questions
> and not the relation between BTP and other efforts.

Ok, it was meant to touch on areas of difference between BTP and some
of the other work that was out at the time.

>     The UN/CEFACT BPSS and related work contains an embedded business
>     transaction protocol that is much more limited than BTP.
>
> OASIS has announced a new TC to continue work on the BPSS specification.
>      The "UN/CEFACT" label may therefore not be appropriate anymore.
>
> I would also say that BPSS describes business collaborations but defers
> to other infrastructure such as BTP or WS-CAF at run time rather than
> saying one is more limited than the other.

Right, it is an apples to oranges comparison.

> 5. When will this specification be completed?
>
>     The Business Transaction Protocol 1.0 was promoted to OASIS Technical
>     Committee specification on 3rd June 2002.
>
> The term is now Committee Draft according to the OASIS Process [2].  I
> am not entirely sure we should use the old term even when referring to
> documents created prior to publication of the latest process.  Has Karl
> said anything one way or the other?

I asked this question directly of Karl Best and the reply was that we
are free to continue to use the name as it was adopted or we can
change it to conform to the new form, up to us.


> thanx,
>         doug
>
> [1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/business-transaction/faq.php
> [2] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/process.php
>
> On 15-Oct-03 08:12, zpope@pobox.com wrote:
>
>> The document BT-TC-FAQ.txt has been submitted by Bill Pope
>> (zpope@pobox.com) to the OASIS Business Transactions TC document
>> repository.
>>
>> Document Description: FAQ for the Business Transaction tC
>>
>> Download Document:
>>
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/business-transaction/download.p
hp/3865/BT-TC-FAQ.txt
>>
>>
>> View Document Details:
>>
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/business-transaction/document.p
hp?document_id=3865
>>