Re: [wsbpel-abstract] Potential requirements and use case

["Monica J. Martin" <Monica.Martin@Sun.COM>]

Satish: We'd provide some additional suggestions:

    * If an abstract process contains opaque elements or activities,
      they must be elaborated.
          o Make explicit the semantics surrounding opaque if accepted. [1]
    * Ensure we can specify a process is abstract or executable
      irrespective of whether opaque is used. [2]
    * Suggest we define a statically verifiable set of conditions to
      specify when a process model is ready to execute.
    * Ban extensions from affecting 'ready to execute.' [3] This is
      inline with current specification that bans extensions affecting
      BPEL semantics.

[1] In order to provide a guide for developers and allow other 
computational or conformance capabilities to be used on top of the 
abstract process.
[2] The condition may occur that opaque activities may have not been 
explicitly added yet, but you wish to ensure that someone doesn't try to 
execute an incomplete process.  We currently have 
abstractProcess="yes|no"? under Process. Is this sufficient?

Thanks.

>Thatte: I think we are agreeing on a few things
>
>1. abstract BPEL allows partial specification of executable processes.
>
>2. we need a precise definition of conformance between a partial process and any executable process that claims to be its completion
>
>3. We do not want to preclude any use case for abstract processes, including 
>
>a. A notation for specifying the externally visible behavior of a web service or a collection of web services where the notation may be used with various degrees of austerity as appropriate for the needs of the specifier,
>
>b. A notation for exchange of process requirements across autonomous entities where the abstract and the executable process are NOT "owned" by the same entity, and
>
>c. A notation for partial specification in a modeling context where the abstract and the executable process ARE "owned" by the same entity.
>
>4.  <opaque> activities and expressions are primarily intended as a proposal for allowing the designer of an abstract process to express his/her intentions regarding mandatory points of extension.  The purpose of <opaque> is NOT to specify all allowable points of extension, prohibiting all other potential points of extension in the completion of an abstract process.  Secondarily, <opaque> activities and expressions serve as a convenience for technical specification and validation using a single schema.
>
>I would argue that the technical convenience argument for <opaque> is a weak one because the syntactically mandated completion points can be easily found by tools and forcing an abstract process designer to explicitly design them in helps tools and BPEL specification writers at the expense of the users of abstract BPEL, i.e., those who read and write instances of abstract BPEL.  This is especially the case for use case (a) above where brevity and readability are likely to be very important.
>
>I believe the primary intention of the <opaque> proposal as a mechanism for expressing the intention for mandatory extension applies primarily to use case (c) and as such I would argue that it belongs more in the realm of a tools oriented extension rather than an essential aspect of abstract BPEL.  
>
>Satish
>  
>