RE: [security-services] Issues Status

[Hal Lockhart <hal.lockhart@entegrity.com>]

Title: RE: [security-services] Issues Status

> I'm listed as champion of issue DS-4-11. I still think that
> returning no
> statements would still be consistent and do not see a problem
> of why the
> syntax should not allow such a thing, since it is harmless. There is
> nothing wrong with 0, just as there is nothing wrong with
> vacuous truth.

You sold me personally on this concept at the recent XACML meeting. However, when thinking about this yesterday, something else occurred to me. The minOccurs value is a sign post to readers who are trying to understand the specification. They can for example, tell at a glance that Advice is an optional feature they don't have to bother with if they don't have any use for it. Similiarly, they can see at a glance that the use of signatures is optional.

If we allow Statement to have a minOccurs of zero, it will not be obvious to most people that the Statement is the whole point of the assertion -- that it contains the crucial information payload that the RP is looking for. I suspect this is one of those things that if we do it, we will find that we constantly have to explain it.

Hal