Transactional Diversity and data validation

What is a valid EMIX message? Does it rely on optionality, or completeness?

Let’s take a simplified abstract product. It consists of rate (power) (R), price (P), start time (S), and duration (D). Performance of an executed transaction inevitability results in all four facts being known.

EMIX uses WS-Calendar, a style of communication in which the facts of a message are shared between the intervals in a sequence and the gluons that contract them. At its simplest (scenario a), we have a single interval in which R, P, S, and D are in that single interval. The sole use of the gluon, then, is to set a handle for an outsider to use to communicate the message “Do It!”. A valid message in this scenario is one that has R, S, D, and P in the interval.

Let’s look instead (scenario B) to an offer that has a standing contract for a single interval, and is waiting for the request that schedules it. (1) The contract may specify a set Price, Start Time, and Duration; the performance call / gluon sets the Rate. (2) The contract may specify a set Rate, Price, and Duration; the performance call / gluon sets the Start Time. (3) The contract may specify a set Rate, Price, and Start Time; the performance call / gluon sets the Duration. (4) (1) The tender may specify the rate, Start Time, and Duration; the integrated contract execution, performance call / gluon sets the Price.

Here we see that no single information element is required in the Interval, none is excluded from the Gluon, but for Performance to occur, each must be in either the Interval or the Gluon. It is easy that use of this model requires still more optionality, as we may have indications of interest and tenders, each vaguer than the complete contract. An initial interval / sequence would be made more and more specific as it flows through the divers market contexts and transaction flows.

Note, that I have not dealt with the multi-interval sequence.

Conformance statements must be made, then, for each step, for each market context that an EMIX exists in. Up front, I can only say that I *require* R, P, S, and D for a contract performance call. Information requirements before that must be market context dependent. These conformance statements must apply after full interval instantiation, i.e., after all gluons have been applied to each interval, on an interval by interval basis.

So now, for the EMIX questions:

1) Is it better to use nillability or optionality? We have complaints in out comment log about each? (Each interval or gluon SHALL include one each of R, P, S, & D, but the value of each may be null).

2) Is there a general ruler we should suggest back top WS-Calendar about these issues?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” -- Upton Sinclair.

Toby Considine
TC9, Inc

OASIS Technical Advisory Board
TC Chair: oBIX & WS-Calendar

TC Editor: EMIX, EnergyInterop

U.S. National Inst. of Standards and Tech. Smart Grid Architecture Committee

Email: Toby.Considine@gmail.com
Phone: (919)619-2104

http://www.tcnine.com/
blog: www.NewDaedalus.com

emix message