[Bug 4074] [Guidelines] Collection of unclear Guidance or text issues

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4074

           Summary: [Guidelines] Collection of unclear Guidance or text
                    issues
           Product: WS-Policy
           Version: FPWD
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Guidelines
        AssignedTo: fsasaki@w3.org
        ReportedBy: Daniel.Roth@microsoft.com
         QAContact: public-ws-policy-qa@w3.org


Title: [Guidelines] Collection of unclear Guidance or text issues

Description:

1.) Section 3.1.1 states:  “The WS-Policy Framework is based on a declarative
model, meaning that it is incumbent on the WS-Policy authors to define both the
semantics of the assertions as well as the scope of their target domain in
their specification. The set of metadata for any particular domain will vary in
the granularity of assertion specification required.” [1]

It is not clear what it means to define the “scope of their target domain.”

2.) Section 3.1.1 later quotes an unknown section from WS-SecurityPolicy (needs
a reference) and prefaces the quote with: “An example of a domain specification
that follows these practices is the WS-SecurityPolicy specification
[WS-SecurityPolicy]. The WS-SecurityPolicy authors have defined their scope as
follows:”  

It is not clear what practice the quote is trying to demonstrate, though I
think the is referring to an assertion author defining the “scope of their
target domain”

3.) Section 4.4.2, 1st paragraph states: “The granularity of assertions is
determined by the authors and it is recommended that care be taken when
defining nested policies to ensure that the options provided appropriately
specify policy alternatives within a specific behavior.” [2]

It is not clear what it means to “define nested policies to ensure that the
options provided appropriately specify policy alternatives within a specific
behavior.”

4.)  Section 4.7 states: “The current set of subjects as mapped to the WSDL 1.1
elements, can also constrain the assertion constructs. For Example, In WS-RM,
the domain authors chose to support certain capabilities at the endpoint level.
This resulted in the finer granularity of the assertion to apply at the message
policy subject, but the assertion semantics also indicates that the if the
senders choose to engage RM semantics (although not specified via attachment in
WSDL at incoming messages), the providers will honor the engagement of RM. This
is illustrative of how the assertion author can specify additional constraints
and assumptions for attachment and engagement of behavior.” [3]

It is not clear how “the current set of subjects as mapped to the WSDL 1.1
elements, can also constrain the assertion.”  It’s not clear how supporting RM
policy at the endpoint “resulted in the finer granularity of the assertion to
apply at the message policy subject.”  It is not clear what “constraints and
assumptions for attachment and engagement of behavior” an assertion author
should specify.

5.) Section 6 states: “domain authors should be aware of the compositional
semantics with other related domains. The protocol assertions that require
composition with WS-Security should be particularly aware of the nesting
requirements on top of transport level security.”  [4]

It is not clear what Section 6 is recommending that policy assertion authors
do.

Justification: The text in these sections does not provide clear guidance,
which could result in confusion and misinterpretation.

Target: Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors

Proposal: 

1,2.) Replace “The WS-SecurityPolicy authors have defined their scope as
follows:” with “The WS-SecurityPolicy authors have defined the scope of their
target domain (security) as follows:”

3.) Remove or clarify the sentence

4.) Remove the section 

5.) Remove or clarify the section.

[1]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/ws/policy/ws-policy-guidelines.html?rev=1.11&content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8#domain-owners

[2]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/ws/policy/ws-policy-guidelines.html?rev=1.11&content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8#nested-assertions

[3]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/ws/policy/ws-policy-guidelines.html?rev=1.11&content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8#levels-of-abstraction

[4]
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2006/ws/policy/ws-policy-guidelines.html?rev=1.11&content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8#inter-policy

Received on Tuesday, 12 December 2006 22:33:29 UTC