Re: [wsbpel] Issue 136 - Proposal For Vote

[Francisco Curbera <curbera@us.ibm.com>]

The principle of least surprise works differently depending on who is going
to be surprised. You are assuming that traditional programmers will be
writing BPEL and will be puzzled that it does not work like C++; we're not
so sure that is the people we need to worry about. On the other hand,
renaming "switch" provides no new function and may "surprise" people
already working with BPEL (users, implementers, etc).

So I would prefer to close w/o change.

Paco




                                                                                                                                        
                      "Yaron Y. Goland"                                                                                                 
                      <ygoland@bea.com>        To:       wsbpeltc <wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org>                                         
                                               cc:                                                                                      
                      01/28/2005 12:33         Subject:  [wsbpel] Issue 136 - Proposal For Vote                                         
                      PM                                                                                                                
                      Please respond to                                                                                                 
                      ygoland                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                        




Issue 136 – If-Then-Else Support

Proposal: Rename the elements in switch to make them into an
if-then-elseif-else structure.

Rationale: BPEL's switch is identical in functionality to what other
languages use if-then-elseif-else for. To make matters more confusing
other languages do include a control structure called 'switch' but in
the majority of languages that 'switch' doesn't work anything like
BPEL's switch does.
             Following the principle of least surprise it would be best if
BPEL's
flow control structures followed the same naming styles as used by just
about every other major language.

Changes Required: Replace "switch" with "if", "case" with "elseif",
"otherwise" with "else" and add in a "then" and condition element to the
switch activity. This is a purely syntactic change.

<if standard-attributes>
    standard-elements
    <condition expressionLanguage="anyURI"?>
       ... bool-expr ...
    </condition>
    <then>activity</then>
    <elseif> *
       <condition expressionLanguage="anyURI"?>
          ... bool-expr ...
       </condition>
       activity
    </elseif>
    <else>?
       activity
    </else>
</if>

Note: Good ideas stolen from Maciej, bad ones I invented myself.


To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of
the OASIS TC), go to
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsbpel/members/leave_workgroup.php
.