Boris, your interpretation of service contract seems to me regards Web Services or related definition of 'interface contract'. To my knowledge, RAF defines two things: Service Description - public announcement of the service abilities and related constraints - and Service Contract - an agreement between the service provider and one or several consumers about what service abilities, related communication means and constraints may be used by the this (or these) consumers. Thus, the service provider knows exactly who uses its service and what obligations in each case the service provider has to provide for.
"The way consumer uses this contract might be specific for a given consumer. " Any consumer may use Service Contract or service in any way consumer wants. However, upon signing the Service Contract, the consumer may enter into legal relationship with the service provider. That is, 'doing anything with contract' is still under the legal constraints. If you meant that the consumer may use _service_ in the way "specific for a given consumer", then I do agree with you - Ken and me are writing related recommendations on the tests that the consumer might need to perform in such case because this use of the service may be in different EC that the service was guaranteed by the service provider.
Regarding "Creating a service contract for a group of consumers does not seem to be practical... and might not be aware which consumers are going to use it" Indeed, the service does not know and does not need to know who uses it. However, the service provider is interested in this matter very much. If the service provider requires Service Contracts, this means that it is not obliged to provide service to any requests sent to the public service interfaces from those who had not signed the contracts. At the same time, there are may examples where Service Description may serve as a default service contract, e.g. for security services - all must use them under their conditions and there is nothing to agree on. Another example, in some geographical areas or in communities of consumers defined based on other criteria, certain services may be available in only one version for all, i.e. all consumers in one will have the Service Contract that may differ from the Service Contract for the same service available in another area (e.g., economical sanctions).
- Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Lublinsky, Boris <boris.lublinsky@navteq.com>
To: mpoulin@usa.com <mpoulin@usa.com>; soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org <soa-rm-ra@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 2:04 pm
Subject: RE: [soa-rm-ra] about Contract definition
What confuses me in all these definitions is mentioning of
multiple participants.
A service contract is defined by service provider and specifies
service’s characteristics and usage/invocation policies.
The way consumer uses this contract might be specific for
a given consumer. Creating a service contract for a group of consumers does not
seem to be practical. Remember a service is created not for a specific consumer(s),
but rather to produce a certain RWE and might not be aware which consumers are
going to use it.
Here is an alternative definition of the service contract (I think
that trying to define a general term we compromise our goal - service contract.
I refer to the Service Contract because we do not mention any other contracts
in the document):
1072
A contract represents an agreement made by two or more
participants
1073
(the contracting parties) on a set of announced service characteristics
and to be used policies applied to this service interactions.
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