ISSUE 35 - Define Conformance Targets

[David Booz <booz@us.ibm.com>]

I'm going out on a limb here, not being an expert, and would like to
instigate some discussion, limited to the context of Policy FW spec.

Clearly the targets are nouns, and we have alot of those in the specs.
Some are obvious; policySet, intent, all the SCDL elements, extensibility
points (this is a FW after all) etc. We also talk about human roles
(developer, assembler, deployer, policy admin) which are clearly nouns.
Then there's the more subtle "processors" that are implicitly present in
the spec, e.g:

Normalized intent processor - I was thinking about the part of the
algorithm in section 4.10 that determines which intents apply to any given
SCDL element. This seems like a seperable thing from what happens with the
results of the normalization, that's why I'm breaking it out as a seperate
piece.

PolicySet assigner/processor - This is the other half of the algorithm in
section 4.10 that assigned policySets based on the results of the
"Normalized intent processor".

Binding selector/processor - With the algorithm we have, I think it is
possible for the deployment software to choose a binding based on intents.
It should therefore also be possible to validate that a developer or
assembly or deployer chosen binding will work.

There may be others, or maybe I have too many already, not sure.  As I
looked at a few examples from other specs, I noticed that the targets of
normative statements seem to be the lower level nouns, vs the conformance
clauses tended to focus on the higher level/more abstract/broader concepts.
The algorithm in section 4.10 is the center of the spec IMHO.  Most
everything that precedes it is building up concepts that will be referenced
from the algorithm.  This leads me to think that the conformance clauses
will also be centered on the algorithm and the plethora of normative text
(still to be written) that supports it.  Martin C's brief guideline
document could be interpreted to agree.

What do others think?

Dave Booz
STSM, SCA and WebSphere Architecture
Co-Chair OASIS SCA-Policy TC
"Distributed objects first, then world hunger"
Poughkeepsie, NY (845)-435-6093  or  8-295-6093
e-mail:booz@us.ibm.com
http://washome.austin.ibm.com/xwiki/bin/view/SCA2Team/WebHome