Service description bits

[Ken Laskey <klaskey@mitre.org>]

I've taken responsibility for service description and will hopefully get to revising shortly.  But in case that shortly slips, here are some key thoughts for advance discussion.

- Description is very important both for the consumer and the provider.  This includes abilities, protocols, formats, policies, ... and differences need to be resolved to establish an execution context.  This is alluded to in the RM but not explored.  I will probably expand on that here.

- All interactions with a service must be based on informations contained in or referenced by the service description or by further information established during an interaction initiated solely on the basis of the service description.  The consumer may know more (there is no way to guarantee a limit on knowledge) but SOA would say the additional information should not be used.  If this additional information is critical (or just very useful), it should somehow be included in the service description.

- The description must somewhere convey technical assumptions, i.e. the world is like this and that is why you can expect real world effects as described.

- Is sufficiency of description that which would support automated use, assuming the contained information can be unambiguously included, understood, and used?

Ken

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Ken Laskey

MITRE Corporation, M/S H305     phone:  703-983-7934

7515 Colshire Drive                        fax:        703-983-1379

McLean VA 22102-7508

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