RE: T2 - Assertions and Questions

[David Fischer <david@drummondgroup.com>]

Quick Reply,

	...Does the judge say "Oh, that delivery confirmation
	doesn't mean anything at all, because it's not an end-to-end
	confirmation from George Foobar himself"?

No, but if I present a DR from the US Postoffice Routing office in Denver, then
that is exactly what the Judge would say.  When we talk about IMs we are not
talking about the ends or their proxies, we are talking about routing nodes
(Routing not WorkFlow Routing).  We are talking about someone other than the To
Party MSH (which in your example would be the AMEX address on your bill -- be it
AMEX itself or one of its proxies).

In an ebXML network example, I (the From Party) might send through Ariba and
then through C1 to you (the To Party).  You might actually have someone hosting
your MSH which has legal authority to respond with a DR.  If I get a receipt
from Ariba or C1, this means nothing (except that the message is proceeding on
the path, which is good to know but not critical).  I might not even know C1 is
in the path!  I need a DR (signed?) from you or your proxy (I am assuming here
that C1 is not your legal proxy).

Regards,

David Fischer
Drummond Group.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Weinreb [mailto:dlw@exceloncorp.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 2:38 PM
To: mwsachs@us.ibm.com
Cc: dsmiley@mercator.com; ebxml-msg@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: T2 - Assertions and Questions


   Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 13:19:31 -0400
   From: Martin W Sachs <mwsachs@us.ibm.com>

   If X intends the message to go to Y but is not concerned with what happens
   between C and Y, it either isn't reliable messaging.

Well, I think I disagree (that it isn't reliable messaging), in the
context of the "chasm model".

In David S.'s "chasm model", from the point of view of the Message
Service protocol, the "To Party" is implemented by two computers, C
and Y.  The boundaries between C and Y, and the way they divide their
responsibilities, are modularly hidden from the Message Service level
of abstraction.

As far as the Message Service protocol is concerned, it doesn't matter
whether C and Y are two CPU's of an SMP multiprocessor, or two nodes
of a shared-disk cluster, or two workstations on an Ethernet.  From the
point of view of MS, there is just one To Party.

The CPP for the To Party contains a PartyInfo/Transport/Endpoint
element, in which the To Party asserts "this is the URI that I want
you to use to send stuff to me".  The To Party takes the responsibility
of selecting the URI, and it asserts that if the Message Service,
using its reliable messaging protocol, delivers the message to that
URI, then the To Party promises that it will process the message.

Here's an analogy.  Suppose I want to cancel my American Express card,
and so I send a letter through the U.S. Postal Service, using their
"delivery confirmation" feature
(http://www.usps.com/shipping/deliver.htm).  I address it to whatever
address American Express tells me that I should send such things to; I
just look at my latest bill and there's this address on it.  Now, for
all I know, the address is some generic company in the midwest that
receives mail for lots of different companies and forwards it.  Or
maybe that address is Amex's central North American corporate
mailroom, which will receive my mail and dynamically figure out which
Amex employee (George Foobar) ought to handle my request, and forward
it to him, perhaps indirectly through some other route.  So there are
all kinds of "intermediaries" happening here, entirely invisible to
me.  Months later, it turns out Amex hasn't cancelled my card, which
has caused me to lose money for some reason, so I sue them, and I want
to present evidence in court that I really did ask them to cancel my
card and they really did receive my mail.  I present my "delivery
confirmation".  Does the judge say "Oh, that delivery confirmation
doesn't mean anything at all, because it's not an end-to-end
confirmation from George Foobar himself"?  I don't think so.  From a
business point of view, my letter was reliably delivered to the To
Party, namely American Express Corp.  What happens to it from that
point on is not part of the protocol.

The main drawback (in a sense) to the "chasm model" is that it takes
the position that the protocol doesn't deal with a concept of
"intermediaries" at all.

Consider Chris F.'s use case, there's an intermittently connected SME
(what does SME stand for?) that "uses an intermediary as a way
station".  In the "chasm model", the SME and the way station would be
considered part of a single From Party, and the communication between
the two of them would *not be specified* by the Message Service
protocol.  In the "chasm model", the Message Service protocol
relinquishes responsibility for that kind of communication: it's the
job of some lower-level protocol that is not specified.

So the "chasm model" implies either that the ebXML standard just
doesn't standardize or specify how that kind of communication works,
or else that ebXML needs to specify a new protocol, at a lower level
than Message Services, that would govern this kind of communication.

(David S., if I'm not representing your ideas accurately, I apologize
and please correct me.)

Is this making any sense?

-- Dan

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