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Subject: Re: [soa-rm] Requesters vs. Consumers
Francis: I concur. I think that some of these concept map ideas were the start of the death spiral for the W3C Web Services Architecture. I was never convinced that the concept of an "owner" was relevant to a generic architecture like the WSA, and I am even less convinced that such a concept belongs in a reference model. In previous groups, we have been warned about adding anything of a legal nature in OASIS specs due to the pandora's box it opens. Duane Francis McCabe wrote: > We originally wanted to use the term *legal entity* to represent the > 'owner' of the agent(s) participating. However, we were advised by > W3C's legal whatever that this was not a good choice. (Too politically > charged apparently); there was also the possibility of an un-owned > agent participating (the mind boggles a bit at this). However, in > common usage, legal entity includes people and corporations. > > This is a tricky area, on the one hand it seems blinkered to pretend > that we are not designing systems for and on behalf of people. On the > other hand, taking people fully into account seems to take us into > realms where our expertise is not appropriate. > > Frank > > > > On Mar 31, 2005, at 5:17 PM, Thomas Erl wrote: > >> It's probably a good time to think about which term we should use to >> represent the potential element responsible for invoking or initiating a >> conversation with a service acting as the service provider. >> Regardless of >> whether this becomes an "official" element within our reference >> model, we >> will likely need to reference such an element in our documentation. >> >> Below are some considerations we can take into account: >> >> - Both of the position papers submitted so far incorporate the term >> "consumer". This term is also used in the ebSOA specification. >> >> - The W3C Web Services Architecture document submitted by Frank >> McCabe uses >> the term "requester" and further qualifies it by suffixing it with >> "entity" >> or "agent" to represent the owner and software program respectively. >> (Prior >> to the current version of the W3C Working Note, this document used >> the term >> "service requester" instead of "requester agent".) >> >> - The W3C Web Services Glossary does not provide a definition for >> "consumer", >> but defines "requester agent" as follows: "A software agent that >> wishes to >> interact with a provider agent in order to request that a task be >> performed >> on behalf of its owner - the requester entity." >> >> - The term "requester agent" is used in the W3C WSDL 2.0 specification, >> whereas "consumer" is used in the WSDL 1.1 version. >> >> - The definitions document submitted by Rebekah uses the term >> "requester", >> most likely because the initial set of definitions were provided by >> Frank. >> >> Given that we are seeking industry-wide acceptance of our reference >> model, >> there may be a benefit to keeping our terminology in alignment with >> terms >> already in use by established (albeit implementation-specific) >> specifications. I personally have no preference, but I do recommend we >> decide on one term and then consider adding a definition to our >> glossary. We >> may want to leverage some of the work performed by the W3C Working >> Group and >> decide whether we also need separate terms to distinguish owner from >> implementation. >> >> On a related note, we have not yet discussed the concept of a service or >> service agent assuming provider and requester/consumer roles. Such a >> concept >> would also affect our definitions. >> >> Thomas > > -- *********** Senior Standards Strategist - Adobe Systems, Inc. - http://www.adobe.com Vice Chair - UN/CEFACT Bureau Plenary - http://www.unece.org/cefact/ Adobe Enterprise Developer Resources - http://www.adobe.com/enterprise/developer/main.html ***********
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