RE: [ws-calendar-comment] One more suggestion, regarding AvailIntervalTy

Hi Toby,

One use case that illustrates several of our problems is shown below. We want to be able to communicate “My billing interval should start on the 15^th of each month”. I’m using a recurrence rule to do this:

Problems:

1. AvailabilityType.availabilityInterval is of type AvailIntervalType, which contains two mandatory attributes: dtStart and duration. Since this example is talking in general, not about a specific month, I don’t want to name a dtStart. And in this example, I don’t want to give an exact duration, since months are of different lengths. I’m not sure what you allow in DurationType since you have it listed as String. We would like availabilityInterval to be optional, or failing that, have the attributes within AvailIntervalType to be optional, or failing that, at least have AvailIntervalType.dtStart be optional (although I might come up with another use case where I want a start time but not a duration).

2. VavailabilityType.busy – we don’t have a defined need to use “busy”, “busyUnavailable” and “busyTentative”, so would rather have this attribute as optional.

3. VavailabilityType.timeRange – we would like this attribute to be optional since we are talking in general about an abstract billing interval. We don’t want to bound it to a finite time range.

So in summary, problem #1 is a real problem for us. Problems #2 and #3 are inconveniences. Hope this example helps.

- Steve

Steven R. Ray, Ph.D.

Distinguished Research Fellow

Carnegie Mellon University

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Email: steve.ray@sv.cmu.edu

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From: Considine, Toby [mailto:Toby.Considine@unc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 9:56 AM
To: steve.ray@sv.cmu.edu; ws-calendar-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [ws-calendar-comment] One more suggestion, regarding AvailIntervalType in WS-Calendar PIM

Thanks, Steve.

TO clarify your request, can you give a specific case?

If I guess what you are trying to do, there are solutions that do not use Availability.

Assume an abstract sequence exists with no date or time specified. (ignoring tzid here for simplicity) Such a sequence is not executable.

1) A gluon could point to it, with no date / time / or availability. A reference to that gluon is completely unrestricted as to when something can be scheduled, i.e., made executable.

2) A gluon could point to it with date, but not time specified. An additional Gluon could point to that naming any time within that date as the [start time]. Once a start time is specified in this way, an executable sequence can be generated.

3) A gluon could point to with Time only, but no Date. This could be a check-in time for a hotel, or the reservation for the picnic hut at the park, which is always 10:00 AM until Park closing. A gluon referencing the first Gluon could then specify a particular day.

None of these three cases make any use of Availability, which is an optional element to define more complicated things, such as “8-1 and 2-5 on weekdays until the start of DST when it will be available from 9-7 daily until the end of the summer” If you d not need a complicated thing, why include the availability element at all?

But perhaps I have missed what you are aiming at, and what functionality you require.

Thanks, you are keeping me (at least) thinking…

“It is the theory that decides what can be observed."

—Albert Einstein

Toby Considine
Phone: (919)962-9073
Information Technology Services
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC

Email: Toby.Considine@unc.edu
Chair, OASIS OBIX Technical Committee
Chair, OASIS WS-Calendar Technical Committee
Editor, OASIS EMIX, Energy Interoperation TC

From: Steve Ray (CMU) [mailto:steve.ray@west.cmu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 12:44 PM
To: ws-calendar-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [ws-calendar-comment] One more suggestion, regarding AvailIntervalType in WS-Calendar PIM

As I understand it, a Gluon / VavailabilityType / AvailabilityType collection can be used to specify a “recipe” sequence that is abstract, not nailed down to a specific date and time. I agree this is a useful application. However, AvailabilityType.availInterval is of type AvailIntervalType that has two required attributes: dtStart and duration. I would recommend that the dtStart attribute of AvailIntervalType be made optional so that an abstract recipe can be specified that is not nailed down to a specific start time.