[NEW ISSUE] Need Assembly level definition for "AllowsPassByReference"

[Mike Edwards <mike_edwards@uk.ibm.com>]

Raiser:        
       Mike Edwards        

Target:        
       SCA Assembly Specification

Description:

<Raised at the request of the SCA
J TC following discussion at the Nov 11-13 F2F meeting>

The SCA Java Common Annotations &
APIs specification defines a annotation that can be used to
mark Java interfaces - @AllowsPassByReference.

The purpose of this annotation is to
indicate that for a remotable interface, where the client and the
service implementation happen to run
in the same operating system process, the SCA runtime is
permitted to avoid the pass-by-value
semantics of remotable interfaces and can in fact simply 
pass the request parameters and the
response through references (ie pass-by-reference
semantics).  This offers the prospect
of a significant performance boost for service invocations
between clients and service implementations
that happen to run within the same process.

The AllowsPassByReference annotation
places requirements on BOTH the client and the service
implementation about how the request
and response data is handled.  Originally, it was thought that
this annotation could be (in effect)
private to the Java specifications, but it is now realized that it is
really part of the wire contract between
client and implementation and in principle could apply
between components implemented using
different technologies (envisage different implementation
types that have runtime containers that
can all share the use of a Java VM, for example, so that in
principle components with different
implementation types can still be "local" to one another.

In these circumstances, there is a need
to define the sematics of "AllowsPassByReference" as 
part of the Assembly specification,
so that there is the potential for it to be interpreted by multiple
implementation specifications.  It
is acknowledged that it may not be applicable to all 
implementation types (eg BPEL), but
in such cases the use of normal pass-by-value semantics
should always be usable.

This issue requests that a normative
definition of "AllowsPassByReference" is added to the
Assembly specification in the section
that deals with Interfaces.

Proposal:

None at present



Yours,  Mike.

Strategist - Emerging Technologies, SCA & SDO.
Co Chair OASIS SCA Assembly TC.
IBM Hursley Park, Mail Point 146, Winchester, SO21 2JN, Great Britain.
Phone & FAX: +44-1962-818014    Mobile: +44-7802-467431  
Email:  mike_edwards@uk.ibm.com

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