Issues on Suspend Capability

["Raepple, Martin" <martin.raepple@sap.com>]

Title: Issues on Suspend Capability

Reviewing the latest draft 0.06 I think there is an inconsistency in the section on the
Suspend Capability (3.5.8). The description of the 'suspend' and 'resume' operations
(lines 2725 & 2726) says that both work on an object immediately or on a specified date.
Since the message schema for SuspendRequestType (and ResumeRequestType)
has not yet defined an element for a time value, this functionality is currently not
addressed by the protocol.

Thinking one step further - especially in the context of the discussion on search of
references - I can't find any information on the effects of these operation regarding the
references of a suspended / resumed object.  The reader might interpret that only the
object and none of its references are suspended (which seems to be reasonable). But
there may be also the need to suspend only a reference (e.g. a person's ownership of
an account) and not the object itself, again immediately or on a specified date.

To reflect this functionality, the suspend operation schema for example may need to
be changed like this:

    <complexType name="SuspendRequestType">
        <complexContent>
            <extension base="spml:RequestType">
                <sequence>
                    <choice>
                       <element name="psoId" type="spml:PSOIdentifierType"/>
                       <element name="reference" type="spmlref:ReferenceType"/>
                    </choice>
                </sequence>
                <attribute name="activationTime" type="xsd:dateTime" use="optional"/>
            </extension>
        </complexContent>
    </complexType>

Since I am relatively new to the TC I am not sure whether these issues has been
already discussed in the group in the past. If not, we may put them on tomorrow's agenda.

Martin

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