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Subject: Issue 147 - Proposal For Vote
147 - Serial and Parallel For-Each Proposal: Introduce a foreach to BPEL with both serial and parallel semantics. Rationale: Just check the issue list for issue 147. There is a whole series of mails attesting to how important this activity is. Introduce a section 12.6 Note: This proposal assumes that issue 126 is adopted. 12.6 - Foreach <foreach iteratorVariableName="ncname" iteratorVariableType="qname"\ parallel="xs:Boolean" validate="yes|no"? standard-attributes> standard-elements <expression expressionLanguage="anyURI">...</query> activity </foreach> A foreach activity is used to iterate over a variable, either serially or in parallel. The foreach activity specifies an expression that is to return a set of element information items (EIIs). The foreach also specifies a variable name in the iteratorVariableName attribute and a variable type in the iteratorVariableType attribute. All the EIIs returned by the expression MUST be of the type specified by the variable type. By default however a BPEL engine is not required to validate variable types, if the programmer wishes to guarantee that the output of the expression will be validated to be of the appropriate type then the validate attribute should be set to 'yes'. If the validate attribute is set to 'yes' and the output of the expression are not all EIIs of the type specified by iteratorVariableType then a mismatchedAssignment failure MUST be thrown. Note that variable validation, if activated, is performed before any of the 'notional' virtual scopes described below are created. If parallel="no" then the foreach is a serial foreach. In that case, conceptually, a new 'notional' virtual scope is created that does not contain a fault handler nor a compensation handler. In fact, this 'notional' virtual scope cannot be said to exist for purposes of determining which scopes are children of other scopes. Please refer to section 13.5.1 for a full description of the compensation handle of this 'notional' virtual scope. This 'notional' virtual scope contains a single variable declaration with the name given in iteratorVariableName and the type given in iteratorVariableType. The virtual scope conceptually contains a virtual sequence. The first entry in the sequence is an assign that assigns an EII from the returned set, in document order where possible, in random order where not, to the scope's only variable. Once an EII from the return set is assigned to the local variable that EII is removed from the return set. The next activity in the sequence is then the activity specified in the body of the foreach activity. If the virtual scope exits without error and if there are remaining EIIs in the returned set then the process repeats until the returned set is empty. The EIIs in the returned set are aliases to real EII instances held in BPEL variables. It is possible for one of the EIIs being pointed to, to be deleted while the for-each is executing. Such a deletion would occur if the EII being pointed to was removed from the BPEL variable that contained it. In that case the EII disappears from the returned set and is not iterated over. The foreach virtual scope local variable in the foreach iteration instance is also an alias to an actual EII in a BPEL variable. While the iteration instance is executing the EII could have its value changed. If that happens then the situation is similar to what happens if a BPEL variable is shared by two simultaneously executing sections of a BPEL, the change made in one section is instantly visible to the other. If, however, the EII instance is deleted then the virtual scope local variable will become null. It is legal to assign to the virtual scope local variable after it becomes null but the value will be lost when that iteration ends, just as with any other scope local variable. To prevent other parts of a BPEL from altering the return set or the scope local variable the foreach can be placed in a serialized scope. If the parallel attribute is set to 'yes' then a parallel foreach is created. In a parallel foreach a virtual flow is created that contains a series of virtual scopes, one for each EII in the returned value set, defined as given previously. As with a serial foreach the local variables in the parallel scopes are aliases to actual BPEL values with the same behavior as given above. While the possibility of interference can be reduced by placing a parallel foreach into a serialized scope this cannot prevent parallel virtual scopes generated by the foreach from interfering with each other since they all exist inside of the same serialized scope. A parallel foreach ends using the same logic that controls any flow's behavior. That is, either all the scopes in the flow successfully exit or one of the scopes throws an unhandled fault and the flow is terminated. Addition to Appendix A: mismatchedAssignment Thrown from a for-each if the returned iterator set is validated and contains entries of a type other than that specified in iteratorVariableType.
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