Issue 92 - 92.2 - Specify ignore behavior for optional but unsupportedelements and attributes - Proposal For Vote

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

An issue that is left unaddressed by the BPEL specification is exactly 
what is a BPEL engine to do if it runs into an element or attribute that 
it doesn't recognize? This can happen, for example, if a process uses an 
optional extension that isn't supported by the BPEL engine. I propose 
adding the following language to section 6.3 to clarify matters:

Insert after the paragraph that begins ”WS-BPEL supports extensibility 
by allowing…”: If, during the processing of a BPEL process an attribute 
is encountered that is not recognized by the processor then the 
attribute MUST be ignored. If, during the processing of a BPEL process 
an element is encountered that is not recognized by the processor then 
the element and its children MUST be treated as if they were not present 
in the BPEL process instance. The previously defined ignore semantics 
make it possible to add optional attributes or elements to BPEL that can 
be safely ignored if not recognized. In the case of unsupported 
mandatory extensions (see section 13.7) the previous logic is 
unnecessary as the entire process instance will be rejected.

         Thanks,

               Yaron