Re: [wsrp] ExtensionDescription

[Rich Thompson <richt2@us.ibm.com>]

Could you provide an example of a custom
user profile item which augments one of the user profile types without
contextual information being relevant?

Rich

Subbu Allamaraju <subbu@bea.com>

08/22/05 01:06 PM

To	Rich Thompson/Watson/IBM@IBMUS
cc	wsrp <wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject	Re: [wsrp] ExtensionDescription

Rich Thompson wrote:
> 
> Lets take a very concrete example; I want to provide additional Contact
> information regarding instant messaging. The natural way to do this
is 
> to extend the Online structure with an array of structures, each of
> which provides a messagingID and a messagingSystem fields. To take
a 
> personal case, I have two home related messaging ids and one work
> related messaging id. Forcing these to a top level structure requires
> each of these structures also carry a means to declare what it relates
> to. I find that unnatural and prone to errors.
> 
> I assert the type, meaning and contextual relationship of the data
to 
> the rest of the user profile are all critical. Lose any one of them
and 
> the data becomes virtually meaningless (and often misinterpreted).

Contextual relationship is not required in every possible custom profile
item. When required, such information can easily be described/encoded 
the  contextual relationship with other items. Instead of solving
this 
in the spec, we can let the owner of custom profile items solve it.

Subbu


> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> *Subbu Allamaraju <subbu@bea.com>*
> 
> 08/22/05 11:14 AM
> 
>                  
> To
>                  wsrp
<wsrp@lists.oasis-open.org>
> cc
>                  
> Subject
>                  Re:
[wsrp] ExtensionDescription
> 
> 
>                  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Andre Kramer wrote:
>  > My fundamental concerns are totally with regards to the
definition of
>  > extensions that are outside the scope of WSRP. These, as
I understand
>  > it, are to be carried in <extensions> elements containing
an “any” value
>  > and for reason of future evolution and extensibility should
be left open
>  > and not described in our protocol IMHO.
> 
> This is my concern as well.
> 
> The key use case here is to carry some to carry data of unknown type
of
> a feature described in the spec. In prior discussions, we seem to
be
> mixing up "data of unknown type" with extensions. To me,
these are two
> different things.
> 
> For this kind of data, we already have the property mechanism, and
> custom profile items can easily be mapped to properties.
> 
> So, my proposal would be to add a field to the UserContext.
> 
> <complexType name="UserContext">
>   <sequence>
>     <element name="userContextKey" type="xsd:string"/>
>     <element name="userCategories" type="xsd:string"
>              minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
>     <element name="profile"
>             type="types:UserProfile"
minOccurs="0"/>
>     <element name="customUserProfileItems"
>             type="types:CustomUserProfileItem"
>             minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
>     <element name="extensions" type="types:Extension"
>             minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
>   </sequence>
> </complexType>
> 
> In this proposal, I am intentially ignoring the question of "extending
> UserProfile" at each level. That approach seems to be muddying
the
> waters further, and does not map very well at the conceptual level
either.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Subbu
> 
> 
> 
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