[Issue 225]: Ambiguity about the implicit reference interface inthe introspected component type of a Spring app context

[Anish Karmarkar <Anish.Karmarkar@oracle.com>]

This is now issue 225
http://osoa.org/jira/browse/JAVA-225

-Anish
--

On 12/19/2010 10:18 PM, Anish Karmarkar wrote:
> Title:  Ambiguity about the implicit reference interface in the
> introspected component type of a Spring app context
>
> Spec: Spring C&I WD05
>
> Description:
> Section 3 of the spec says:
> "A <reference/> element exists for each unique bean reference in the
> application context to a bean which is not found in the application
> context and where the bean reference refers to a Java interface class"
>
> Further down for the introspected reference in the component type it says:
> " interface.java child element is present, with the interface attribute
> set to the fully qualified name of the interface class identified by the
> bean reference"
>
> But the spec does not address the case where,
> 1) two or more beans refer to the same bean reference that is not found
> in the application context (i.e., 2 or more beans refer to the same
> introspected SCA reference), and
> 2) fully qualified name of the interface class identified by the bean
> references are different.
>
> For example:
>
> <beans>
>
>    ...
>
> <bean id ="bean1" class ="org.example.Class1">
> <property name="ref" ref="SCAReference"/>
> </bean>
>
> <bean id ="bean2" class ="org.example.Class2">
> <property name="someOtherRef" ref="SCAReference"/>
> </bean>
>
> <beans>
>
> Both bean1 and bean2 refer to the same SCAReference. If the interface
> type for ref in Class1 is the same as that of someOtherRef in Class2,
> then there is no ambiguity about the interface type for the introspected
> SCA reference, but if they are not, then it is not clear what should
> happen.
>
> Proposal:
> Here is an outline for a proposal to resolve the case above --
> 1) if the interface type for properties that refer to the same bean are
> not the same AND are not subinterfaces then that is an error.
> 2) else, the narrowest subinterface is used for the value of
> interface.java/@interface