Potential Removal of wsa:From

My organization, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), was a
relatively early adopter of WS-A.  We have a messaging framework in place
now that is compliant with the March of 2004 release of the spec.  

Now, having reviewed the W3C Candidate Recommendation, I have come across an
editor's note that is somewhat ominous for us.  It states that "The working
group is considering removing the wsa:From element due to lack of use-cases
and seeks feedback on this decision. "  I wanted to provide some feedback
before the deadline of November 1.

The use case that we are currently executing in production involves a
messaging framework made up of multiple web service nodes along the message
path.  We have organized the framework into a hierarchy of endpoint service
consumers and providers, and intermediary brokers.  

The hierarchy of messaging nodes is organized under an Enterprise Message
Broker (EMB), including domain brokers connected directly to the EMB, and
adapter nodes connected to domain brokers.   The adapter nodes are the
ultimate service consumer and provider applications' "bridges" into the
messaging framework.  

The hierarchy is a tree structure, with the EMB at the root, and all
subordinate brokers and adapters organized as branches of the tree.  We use
the wsa:From field in this context to identify a logical sender node as the
message passes from its domain broker, up to the EMB, then down another
branch to another domain broker, and ultimately to the service provider.  

In a synchronous request/reply exchange, once the message passes beyond the
sender's directly connected broker, the next nodes in the framework still
require the intelligence of who the initial sender node was in order to
perform such operations as authorization for use of requested service,
authorization for use of the semantic vocabulary (i.e. namespace) of the
payload business message, and deciding what transformations to apply to the
business payload.  

Our concern at CIBC is that if we lose the wsa:From, we will lose the
ability to identify the message sender in our distributed web services
framework, beyond the initial adapter-to-domain-broker communication.

Thanks,

Greg Kliewer
Architect and Field Consultant
Application Integration Services
CIBC, Technology Solutions
> 161 Bay Street,  (BCE-9)
> Toronto, ON M5J 1C4
Phone  : 416.956.3899
Mobile : 416.930.3597

Received on Monday, 31 October 2005 01:46:24 UTC