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

["Martin Chapman" <martin.chapman@oracle.com>]

Ok guys lets try and bring this to a close.

Peter, Are you proposing any motion here?

Martin.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Furniss, Peter [mailto:Peter.Furniss@choreology.com] 
>Sent: 28 May 2004 12:53
>To: Mark Little; Jim Webber; ws-caf
>Subject: RE: [ws-caf] Mt Everest and WS-CF
>
>
>
>Mark,
>
>> > But you can get them to understand your own ad-hoc overload of the 
>> > ws-context identifier ?
>> >
>> > 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.
>> 
>> Peter, that is incorrect. Maybe there is a problem with the text 
>> describing this, but I thought we were quite clear in the 0.2 draft 
>> that a context identifier represents an activity which represents a 
>> set of related invocations on (potentially a number of 
>different) Web 
>> services. As such, by itself it does have implied semantics: 
>> correlation of invocations. This is precisely what Jim, 
>Savas and the 
>> WS-GAF document defined last September (I think). As such,
>> WS-Context is useful by itself.
>
>What does correlation cause to happen ? Something has its 
>behaviour modified by the presence of the WS-Context header or 
>there wasn't any point in sending it. Stating that a context 
>identifier labels the invocations in an activity means nothing 
>unless the activity itself has some  attributes that are known 
>among the implementations.
>
>
>Another way of expressing this:
>
>a) A SOAP implementation allows access to the headers, and has 
>no constraints on the headers - they can be inspected and 
>walked through as xml constructs. (as infoset or raw, as you 
>please - infoset only if it can find the schema) Is it an 
>implementation of basic WS-Context ?
>
>b) The implementation is modified to recognise WS-Context 
>headers, and offers an additional internal api that gives 
>access to them via thread-local storage. No deployed 
>application uses this new api. Is it an implementation of 
>basic WS-Context ?
>
>c) the implementation is modified such that if it receives a 
>WS-Context, and the mustPropagate flag is true, and the 
>processing resulting from the received message causes any 
>outbound soap messages, the WS-Context header is copied 
>unchanged to that. Is it now an implementatioan of basic WS-Context ?
>
>d) An application using a) or b) includes the context 
>identifier in its access logs, but does nothing else. Is it 
>now an implementation of basic WS-Context ?
>
>
>I'm not sure what else can be done with just WS-Context alone 
>- and even
>d) seems to have some understanding of a specification in 
>addtion to WS-Context itself. Anything more (like recognising 
>it as a WS-CF context and registering with the coordinator, or 
>adding stuff to it) would clearly be implementation of a 
>WS-Context-using protocol, not of WS-Context alone.
>
>
>Peter
>
>