[muws] comments on MUWS spec

["Vambenepe, William N" <vbp@hp.com>]

Hi all,

Here are some non-editorial corrections I would like the group to make
to MUWS 0.5.

Regards,

William



4.2.4: "CurrentResourceState" property: why "current". Aren't all
properties by default the current value unless otherwise specified? We
don't say CurrentResourceID, CurrentName, CurrentNumberOfMessages,
CurrentLastRestartDate, etc... So I propose to rename
"CurrentResourceState" to just "ResourceState".

4.3.3: Why is "CurrentTime" of type:muwsMetrics? It should just be
xsd:DateTime. There is absolutely no value in making "CurrentTime" of
type metric. It is a non-metric property used to support the use of
metrics. (note: in this case, the "current" kind of makes sense because
saying just "time" might be confusing)

4.2.2: Represent states with QNames rather than URIs. The reason is that
if you don't understand a URI you are stuck and can't go anywhere, while
if you don't understand a QName you can find out if it is linked to
other Qnames you understand and might still be able to understand it
enough to make use of it. To do so, here is a proposed mechanism:

A "linked chain QName" is defined recursively as a QName that points to
a restriction of either the simple type muws:BaseState (which MUWS
defines) or a simple type represented by a "linked chain QName" itself.
In addition, MUWS would mandate that all import statements necessary to
put a "linked chain QName" in scope MUST have a location attribute
pointing to the schema in which the QName is defined.

Here are a couple of schema definitions for "chain linked Qnames" that
would represent states (I made up the examples, I am just trying to
illustrate the mechanism):

In the muws targetnamespace:

<xs:simpleType name="Unavailable">
  <xs:restriction base="muws:BaseState"/>
</xs:simpleType> 

In the mows targetnamespace:

<xs:simpleType name="TransportUnvailable"> 
  <xs:restriction base="muws:Unavailable"/> 
</xs:simpleType> 

In the "apache axis" targetnamespace:

<xs:simpleType name="TomcatHTTPListenerDown"> 
  <xs:restriction base="mows:TransportUnavailable"/> 
</xs:simpleType> 

We end up with states muws:Unavailable, mows:TransportUnavailable,
axis:TomcatHTTPListenerDown that are derivations of one another, in that
order. And this can be easily extended by anyone in their own domain. If
I am told by a managed object that it is in state
axis:TomcatHTTPListenerDown and I don't understand the axis namespace, I
can still find that this is a restriction of mows:TransportUnavailable
and treat it as such. And if I don't understand the mows namespace
either, I can go all the way back to muws:Unavailable and that still
gives me some information about the state.