Alastair asked me to send out the questions I got from today; I assume
this will be our charter for the next revision, so to speak. Could you
validate that this is accurate against your understanding as well before
I send them out?
I'll take a pass at the model text tomorrow and send it to you both;
prior to, I'd like to get your takes on the questions -- I'm not certain
you will both agree with my intial opinions. I guess Mark should update
the diagram?
Thanks.
Greg
1) There is some confusion over the last paragraph in the first
section (Activities and Contexts): specifically how does the begin
operation relate to nesting? The last sentence of said paragraph implies
contexts can be used to supply ALS configuration information, whereas
other parts of the spec suggest that a begin in a context generates a
parent-child (nested) relationship.
What text does this refer to? I can't find it in the Context spec. or the
text accompanying the UML diagram.
2) Are the protocol identifier, ALS configuration identifier, etc. all
the same thing?
Yes, he's right (damn ;) The ALS-configuration identifier is the type
attribute in the context.
3) Should "web service operations performed" be changed to "web
services operation invocations" in the first sentence.
Which text?
4) If the ALS is an optional implementation technique, does it make
sense to expose it in the application interoperability layer (ie, what's
in the context should be independent of how the ALS is configured).
It's an option for the "context service", but that really exists as two
logical entities: the context manager (the thing that returns the context
either via getContext or for begin operations), and the context augmentation
manager (!), which provides a way for services to plug into the "context
service" and augment the context (!) 99% of users will use the context
manager, and that doesn't expose ALS information.
We should augment the text in the specification to make this distinction
clearer if necessary.
5) the diagram appears to have a mistake: should the context and the
activity identifier be related in a bi-directional one to one
relationship?
Maybe there's confusion as to what Context is in the diagram. It's meant to
be an element in a context structure (hence the nesting relationship it has
with itself). So, with that in mind, a context element has exactly one
activity identifier associated with it. An activity identifier is associated
with exactly one activity (and hence one context element). So the diagram
seems right to me.
Mark.
----
Mark Little,
Chief Architect, Transactions,
Arjuna Technologies Ltd.