Re: [oslc-domains] Reified relationships in RM domain

["Nicholas Crossley" <nick_crossley@us.ibm.com>]

Martin,

You are right in that the canonical
example was the title. That is, when creating a link from a requirement
to something else, the client could supply reified statements that included
the title of the target resource - or the server could fill that in by
default for future readers of the requirement. This could be useful when
displaying lists of links, including in cases where the target resource
was on a server not currently reachable.

However, subsequent thinking and discussion
led the committee to realize that having the title, or any other property,
copied into these reified statement could lead to security holes - the
person reading the requirement might not have read access to the target
resource. The title could contain classified names or other words, and
similarly for other properties.

We came to feel that such reified statements
were unnecessary duplication of data, and should be avoided in most cases.

Nick.



From:      
 "Sarabura, Martin"
<msarabura@ptc.com>
To:      
 "oslc-domains@lists.oasis-open.org"
<oslc-domains@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date:      
 03/19/2018 09:22 AM
Subject:    
   [oslc-domains]
Reified relationships in RM domain
Sent by:    
   <oslc-domains@lists.oasis-open.org>

---

Hi all, the previous version of the RM
spec http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/RmSpecificationV2#RM_Relationship_Propertiessays this:
RM providers MUST accept relationship
properties, as described in OSLC Core Link Guidance. The following relationship
properties are defined by this specification: …
Then the spec lists 5 properties, all with
minimum cardinality 0 and therefore optional.
An equivalent statement does not appear
in the new spec though the concept is discussed in this section https://rawgit.com/oasis-tcs/oslc-domains/master/rm/requirements-management-spec.html#labels
 
Since all properties listed in the old
spec are optional it’s reasonable that they are not explicitly included
in the new spec. But why not include at least some examples in the non-normative
guidance?
 
There is one word in the v2 spec above
that seems confusing to me: accept. This suggests that there must
be a method for the client to specify the value of a property. Do we want
the client to be able to specify properties on the relationship? If so,
then how would that be done? Of the examples given, only one might make
sense – the dcterms:title. All the others could be assigned automatically
by the server though it’s not clear to me how the server could assign
multiple creators if only the currently logged in person is creating the
relationship. Anyway, maybe this is just a v2 issue but I’d like to clarify
if possible.
 
Thanks, Martin