Issue - 77 - Under specified operation definitions

["Yaron Goland" <ygoland@bea.com>]

Issue - How do to deal with message content that is not specified in the
WSDL abstract operation definition?

	For example, if a BPEL process receives a SOAP message with a SOAP
security header that wasn't specified in the WSDL abstract operation
definition then how does the BPEL process reach into the header and pull out
the name of the sender so that the BPEL process can send a message such as
"I just got a signed message from Joe"?

	The inverse example is also possible. The BPEL engine may have been
given a standard WSDL definition that does not specify the use of a callback
header in the WSDL abstract operation definition. If the BPEL process needs
to insert such a header, how does it do it?

	The original issue that started this thread
(http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/wsbpel/200310/msg00197.html) also
provides another example of the problem that uses some fairly naughty but
not apparently illegal WSDL behavior.

There would seem to be two fairly straight forward solutions to the issue -
Introspection or re-write the WSDL.

Introspection would require us to introduce a new BPEL activity that could
somehow plum a message so that it is possible to 'see' parts of the concrete
message that are not present in the abstract operation definition. Similarly
we would need to be able to edit the concrete message before it goes out in
order to include content that wasn't defined in the WSDL abstract operation
definition. The complexity of introspection makes for what appears to me to
be a solution that is much worse than the problem.

The other solution is to require that people re-write their WSDLs. If you
want to receive message content that isn't in the abstract operation
definition you were given then you need to edit the WSDL you feed your BPEL
engine to include that content in its abstract operation definition. The
same logic applies to sending messages with content that wasn't specified in
the original WSDL abstract operation definition. 

Re-writing WSDLs may not be pretty but introducing introspection seems
worse.

	Yaron

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