Public Comment

[comment-form@oasis-open.org]

Comment from: dave.mcalpin@epok.net

Name: Dave McAlpin
Organization: Epok, Inc.
Regarding Specification: WS-ResourceProperties through section 5.1.1

1. Line 329. Shouldn't this start with "The complexType defining..."? It's not the resource properties document itself that's a global element declaration, is it?

2. Line 332. I don't understand the intent of requirement 2. Does this refer to the complexType that defines the resource properties document or an instance of the resource properties document? In either case, if requirement 1 is satisfied, how could you NOT refer to it by a QName?

3. Line 372 (and others) says, "The GetResourcePropertyDocument request message MUST follow the WS-Resource Access Pattern." I'm not clear what requirement this normative MUST imposes on the implementor. RFC 2119 says keywords "MUST only be used where it is actually required for interoperation or to limit behavior which has potential for causing harm (e.g., limiting retransmisssions). For example, they must not be used to try to impose a particular method on implementors where the method is not required for interoperability." I assume, then, that the requirement to follow the WS-Resource Access Pattern has something to do with interoperability. But the definition in WS-Resource isn't much help when it says, "An identifier of the resource MUST appear as part of any message to a WS-Resource to allow the WS-Resource to disambiguate the resource targeted by the message. We refer to this pattern of access as the 'WS-Resource Access Pattern'." Would it be possible to spell out more clearly what an implementor needs to do to satisfy the interop requirements of WS-RAP?

4. Line 379. Shouldn't {any} be followed by a star ("*") since the resource properties document may be empty? This could happen (I think) if the resource properties document definition contained no resource property elements (per line 335) or because the resource property element(s) have minOccurs=0 and no values.

5. Line 387 makes it sound like the contents of the response to GetResourcePropertyDocument must conform to the resource property document's schema. Is that the intent of "MUST correspond"? If so, what if the requestor doesn't have permission to retrieve a particular property that's required by the schema? Does the entire request fail? In any case, I think it would be useful if the text was a little more explicit. If it's possible to fail because the requestor doesn't have permission for a particular resource property element, it might also be useful to define an "AccessDenied" fault.