RE: [ws-caf] Agenda for the demo application

["malik saheb" <malik.saheb@arjuna.com>]

Hi Jim

The demo application is based on the WS-I Supply Chain Application that
defines several services and not only the Retailer service. These
services Warehouse service, Manufacturing service and Logging service.

I agree that the way the demo application is presented to use the
WS-Context is a bit simplified since we discussed only on the Retailer.
May be, we have just considered to show one use-case of WS-Context and
not several scenarios presenting the advantage to use it as a standard
solution. 
We could eventually look at other ways to define and manipulate a
context. The document we have produced defines the notion of participant
store, and we focus only on the Retailer, we could obviously imagine
another scenario by involving warehouses, where the context propagated
between them includes the shopping card (with items chosen in this shop)
and customer identifications. 
The context propagating between participating shops could involve only
customer identifications and an address or URI that identifies an
invoice established by a participating store. The invoice URI(s) could
be then gathered by a "billing service" that establishes a global
invoice. 
Passing the context by value or by reference is another issue, we could
discuss on the best way. 

What I have described above is just a scenario, but personally I'm open
to any suggestion that allow us to enhance the demo application in order
to exhibit features of the WS-Context and the interest to use it. But we
have also to consider the timing and our internal resources to build
such application. 

Malik


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Webber [mailto:Jim.Webber@newcastle.ac.uk] 
Sent: 13 February 2004 04:35
To: Furniss, Peter; ws-caf@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ws-caf] Agenda for the demo application

Peter:

The WS-GAF proposal used WS-Context because it enables us to link
together services in an ad-hoc way withouth having to resort to ad-hoc
methods to do it. Sure we use SOAP headers (that's what the spec tells
us), but our services are all aware of the format of WS-Context
contexts, whereas it would be a right royal pain if we had to make them
aware of every possible type of context that they might encounter.

Perhaps therefore it is the demo application which should be altered?
There is little value in showcasing WS-Context for a single service,
since WS-RF is already optimised for that use case ;-)

Any thoughts Malik?

Jim