Public Comment

[comment-form@oasis-open.org]

Comment from: Mark.McKeown@manchester.ac.uk

Name: Mark Mc Keown
Title: Dr
Organization: University of Manchester
Regarding Specification: WS-Resource 1.2 Public Review Draft 02 6 October 2005


Line 117 - use of the word logical is ambigious, what does it mean? 

Line 118 - A resource is identifiable but the specification does not tell implementors how to identify the resource. Normative references include URI - should it be a URI? If it is not by URI then the specfication is in conflict with its normative references.

Line 122 - "A WS-Resource is a Web Service through which a resource can be accessed" does not correspond with the diagram at

line 140. Line 122 defines a WS-Resource as being just a Web Service with some constraints, the diagram implies the WS-Resource is composed of the Web Service and the resource.

Line 140 - There is a semi-circle in the diagram that is not labeled, the thing "in front" of the Web Service.

Line 137-138 - Conflicts with Line 122, there is only one Web Service in the diagram, so there is only one WS-Resource in the diagram.

Line 148 - Must an EPR for a WS-Resource contain ReferenceParameters, if not can an example be used which doesn't use ReferenceParameters?

 Line 148 - This use of WS-Addressing EPRs is in direct conflict of with the W3C Web Architecture, attempts are being made by the W3C TAG to include in a statement in the WS-Addressing spec to this
effect. 

One proposed version of the statement is:

"Use of the abstract properties of an EPR other than wsa:address to identify resources is contrary to WebArch" For example, we note that WS-RF specification uses EPRs to identify information resources (such as for example experimental datasets in the Grid) which prevents hypertext links from being made to them.

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2005Oct/0048.html

If ReferenceParameters are used in EPRs then any person who recieves them probably should not share them with other people as the ReferenceParameters could contain client specifc information, for example information that identifies the client to the server. A client cannot know the purpose of the ReferenceParameters, unless he is operating in a closed system where he has a undertanding of the service's implementation. For Grid computing where sharing resources is important the use of ReferenceParameters by WSRF implementations could have serious consequences.