Issue 160 - Proposal for vote

[Alex Yiu <alex.yiu@oracle.com>]

Hi all,

I am making the proposal sent out two months ago a formal proposal to vote:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/wsbpel/200412/msg00103.html

A link to a XSD background supplementary note to list out more examples 
to illustrate how existing <assign>/<copy> can create data which are 
invalid to XSD.
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/wsbpel/200501/msg00018.html

In short, explicit XML validation is needed in any serious programming 
languages which has the capability to generate new XML data and 
manipulate existing XML data.

Thanks!


Regards,
Alex Yiu

Title: Issue 160 - Proposal Draft

Issue 160 - Proposal For Vote

Last modified: Dec 15, 2004 - 1:00pm PDT

Rationale and Background

• Certain usage of assign operation today already allow XML data invalid to schema to be created:
  • e.g. the literal form of assign
    
• Data operations that violates schema validation are difficult or even impossible to catch at static analysis in a number of cases:
  
  • Data value cases: which are impossible to catch at static analysis time
    
  • key/keyRef and id/idRef: for uniqueness and cross referencing
    
  • regular expression pattern for simple type values restriction
    
  • Structure cases: which are difficult (if not impossible) to catch at static analysis time
    
    • xsi:type: for example: changing (or adding or removing) an xsi:type attribute will make a piece of data changing from valid to invalid or vice versa
      
    • local element declaration:  if a part of schema design is using a local element declaration, when combined with the usage of certain XPath pattern (e.g. "/abc//def"), it will be impossible for static analysis to determine which schema type of <def> belongs during static analysis
      
• It is a well known fact that it is way too expensive to do validation after every single data manipulation operation (e.g. assign) at runtime. We should NOT project this expensive and potentially empty promise in BPEL specification.
  

Suggested Goals

• We believe the XML data only needs to be validated at the runtime only at certain points of BPEL execution: e.g. message boundary or explicit validation markup
  
• We need allow users to specify where the schema validation points are.
  
• A BPEL implementation is encouraged to catch the clear cases of invalid XML data manipulation as much as possible during static analysis.
• Here are some places where data validity checking can happen:
  
  • message boundary: A BPEL engine MAY validate data at the message related operation in both direction ("in" and "out").
  • activity boundary: A BPEL developer can choose to validate XML data at the boundary of certain activity. E.g. <assign>. 
  
  

Detailed Text Changes:

WSDL Message Validation

In Section "11.3 Invoking Web Service Operations" "11.4. Providing Web Service Operations", this paragraph will be added to the end of each section:

An BPEL implementation MAY provide a configurable mechanism to enable or disable schema validation of incoming and outgoing messages during the execution of Web Service related activities, e.g., receive, reply, pick, onEvent and invoke activities. The details of configuration mechanism is out of the scope of this specification.

New Activity for Validating XML Data

Besides the message boundary, we 
would like to allow people to add explicit validation operation in BPEL.

In Section "6.2. The Structure of a Business Process":
<validateXML> is added to the bullet list under the heading "token "activity" can be any of the following". And, add the following paragraph before the pargraph of "<assign> construct generates a fault from inside the business process":

The <validateXML> construct can be used to validate the values of variables against their associated XML data definition. The construct has a variable attribute, which points to the variable being validated. The syntax of the validateXML activity is:

<validateXML variable="ncname" />

At the end of Section "9.2 Variables", add the following paragraph:

Values stored in variables can be mutated during the course of process execution. A <validateXML> activity can be used explicitly to ensure that values of variables are valid against their associated XML data definition, including XML Schema simple type, complex type, element definition and XML definitions of WSDL parts. <validateXML> activity has a variable attribute, which has a NCNAME value. The variable attribute points to the variable being validated. The syntax of the validateXML activity is:

<validateXML variable="ncname" />

When one or more variables are invalid against their correponding XML definition, a standard fault of "bpws:invalidXMLData" fault MUST be thrown.

New "validateXML" attribute for <Assign>

A new "validateXML" 
attribute is suggested to be added to <assign> activity:

The syntax of <assign> in Section "6.2. The Structure of a Business Process" and "9.3 Assignement" will be changed as follow:

<assign validateXML="yes|no"? standard-attributes>
    standard-elements
    ...
</assign>

At the end of  Section "9.3 Assignment", add the following paragraphs:

An optional validateXML attribute can be used with <assign> activity. When validateXML is set to "yes".  It can be seen as a convenient marco of a combination of <assign> and <validateXML> operations. With validateXML="yes", the <assign> activity will validate all the variables, which are being modified by the <assign> activities. E.g. variables being  referenced in the to-specs.

The validateXML logic and assignment logic is considered as one unit of operation. If the validateXML parts of operation fail, the whole assignment operation is considered as a failure also. When one of the variables is invalid against its correponding XML definition, a standard fault of "bpws:invalidXMLData" fault MUST be thrown. Please note that the default of the validateXML attribute is "no".

There are a number of outstanding problems in the text of Section "9.3.1. Type Compatibility in Assignment".  Hopefully, Issue 51 will address those issues.  http://www.choreology.com/external/WS_BPEL_issues_list.html#Issue51

Standard Fault

Add the following fault to Appendix A:
bpws:invalidXMLData 
Thrown when any XML validation (implicit or explicit: e.g.
<validateXML> and <assign validateXML="yes"> activity) fails

END