Summary of AttributeAssignment discussion

[Seth Proctor <Seth.Proctor@Sun.COM>]

AttributeAssignment is used in an Obligation to specify attribute
values. Specifically, an AttributeAssignment _is_ an AttributeValue. The
question was whether this form

  <AttributeAssignment DataType="...string"
   AttributeId="foo">bar</AttributeAssignment>

or this form

  <AttributeAssignment DataType="...string"
   AttributeId="foo">
    <AttributeValue DataType="...string">bar</AttributeValue>
  </AttributeAssignment>

is the correct way to express an assignment of type string and value
"foo".

We agreed that the first form is correct, since AttributeAssignment is
an AttributeValue, and therefore should follow the behavior that any
other AttributeValue has. This does not requre any changes to normative
text, but it does require changes to examples. It might be useful to add
text in section 5 where AttributeAssignment is described, but I do not
believe it is needed once the examples are cleaned up.

Note that the second form is not illegal, though it may not use string
as the datatype (see my previous summary of the legal string value
discussion). The second form, given a valid datatype, or given encoded
tags, would simply have different meaning (it would be a string
containing the entire XML element, not just the value "bar").


seth