Suggested wording changes to WS-Policy

["Ashok Malhotra" <ashok.malhotra@oracle.com>]

On the 1/4 telcon I was given an action item to suggested clarifying wording to the WS-Policy WG.
This clarification is motivated by the dependencies between the RM assertions as discussed in my earlier notes.
To recap, there are three RM assertions:
<wsrmp:RMAssertion [wsp:Optional="true"]? ... > 
<wsrmp:SequenceSTR [wsp:Optional="true"]? ... /> 
<wsrmp:SequenceTransportSecurity [wsp:Optional="true"]? ... />

Assertion 2 depends on assertion 1 and is invalid unless 1 is present.
Assertion 3 depends on 1 and the presence of a sp:TransportBinding assertion.  Both must be present for assertion 3 to be valid.

1. The WS-Policy Framework document says in section 3.1:
"[Definition: A policy assertion represents an individual requirement, capability, or other property of a behavior.]
The word "individual" is not accurate.  If  assertion 2 and assertion 1 are used the capability is defined by their combination.  
In the security domain, several assertions may be needed to define a capability.
Thus, change the above sentence to something like "[Definition: A policy assertion represents an requirement, capability, or other property of a behavior that is defined, possibly, in combination with other assertions in with assertion-specific semantics.]

2. The Guidelines for Policy Assertions document discusses dependencies between assertions in section 6.
It would be useful in this section to warn the assertion authors that dependencies between assertions can create difficulties when policies are normalized.  It may also be desirable to add an example of a policy that contains two assertions whose validity depends on one another.  If both assertions are marked 'optional', then the two of the four policy alternatives which are generated will contain only one of the two assertions and may be invalid.


All the best, Ashok