RE: [ws-caf] Mt Everest and WS-CF

["Furniss, Peter" <Peter.Furniss@choreology.com>]

This started out as a reply to Jim, but it seems I'm arguing with
everyone.

Such discussions as we've had often turn out to be based on an
underlying difference
of assumption.  I think we may have got down to it, or near it.

> > Do you accept that they will have to implement something 
> you define ? 
> > You seem to think WS-Context alone will do it, but it has no 
> > semantics.
> 
> No I do not accept this. What I'm trying to convey is that 
> even the little bits of information conveyed in a plain 
> WS-Context context are useful for me. It's not rocket science 
> of course, but the thing that makes it click into place is 
> that the structure is (or will be) standardised.

To keep things light, how will you cope with the following:

From: customer services manager, Whoever Web Services

Dear Mr Webber,

I see from our server logs that you have been using our aestivation and
quadration web services, in accordance with our agreements and the
published
interface definitions.

As you are obviously aware, our services support WS-Context, and I see
that you 
include a WS-Context header in the SOAP messages you send us. These
headers have
ctx:context-type URI of http://jim.webber.name/conjoint123. We are quite
happy to 
accept SOAP messages with this context, but we are not sure what effect
you intend
this to have, since we do not have any information about what processing
is required
for  http://jim.webber.name/conjoint123. Our services are highly
configurable and 
extensible, so I'm sure we will be able to enhance our services to
support your
needs, but we do need to know what we are supposed to do with the
context. Do you just
wish us to record the activity identifier in our service logs ? Do you
want your
itemised bill to include the identifier ? Should our systems be invoking
operations on the 
context service identified in the context ? Or are your expectations of
our behaviour
covered entirely by the mustUnderstand and mustPropagate flags.

I gather that some assert that placing a WS-Contet value indicates that
the 
operation invocations are part of the activity identified in the
context. This is
may be very nice, but our services make no use of this indication, and
can make no 
use of it without some further definition of their expected behaviour.

....



Peter