Issue - 117 - Link Name Scoping

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Issue - 117 - Link Name Scoping

Status: open
Categories: State management
Date added: 14 Apr 2004
Submitter: Yuzo Fujishima
Date submitted: 14 April 2004
Champion: Yuzo Fujishima [fujishima@bc.jp.nec.com]
Document: BPEL 1.1 Specification
Description: When a flow activity is nested within another flow activity, two links with the same name can be
defined, one for each flow. The current specification is unclear about whether such definition
is legal, and if legal, how link names are scoped.

Discussion:

Suppose we have the following process:

<flow name="F1">
  <links>
    <link name="L1"/> <!-- L1 is defined here and ... -->
  </links>
  <sequence name="S1">
    <flow name="F2">
      <links>
        <link name="L1"/> <!-- ... here -->
      </links>
      <sequence name="S2">
          <invoke name="I1" ...>
            <target linkName="L1"/> <!-- Which L1? -->
          </invoke>
          ...

Note that link L1 is defined at two places.
Q1: Is this definition legal?
Q2: If legal, is I1 target of L1 of F2 (F2.L1) or L1 of F1 (F1.L1)?
Submitter's proposal: Allow defining links with the same name. For a referencing activity, the inner-most link for the activity hides all other links with the same name. (In the above example, activity I1 is the target of link F2.L1, not F1.L1.)
Links: Yuzo Fujishima, 13 Apr 2004     rkhalaf, 13 Apr 2004     Yaron Y. Goland, 13 Apr 2004
Changes: 14 Apr 2004 - new issue

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