Re: SAWSDL and "effects"

Dear Jim,

I agree with you very much on the usefulness of knowing whether an
operation has some significant side effects or not. It seems that you
basically need to know whether an operation is "safe" in Web
Architecture terms [1]. Please note that WSDL 2.0 [2] has an extension
called "Operation Safety" which allows you to annotate your WSDL with a
claim that an operation is safe. This mechanism is trivially portable to
WSDL 1.1 as well. Do you think this would help you?

Secondly, I am of the opinion that preconditions and effects can both be
referenced using a modelReference. Yes, you cannot just point to a
simple expression, you have to point to something that will say that
this expression is a precondition or an effect, but that also gives you
the opportunity to specify exactly what you mean by a precondition or by
an effect, i.e. what is the context for evaluating the expression. This
is very similar to a proposal we recently had for moving interface
category to a tiny ontology + modelReference. Do you think that this
approach would be useful for you?

Lastly, I am prepared to consider something like preconditions or
effects, whether or not it is based on modelReference, provided that
somebody gives the WG a fully-fledged proposal and it does not generate
significant controversy. Feel free (everybody) to discuss effects and
preconditions on the mailing list, but please understand that it won't
get official WG time (issue list, telcon or f2f agendas) before there is
something "ready". Then we may also have something to show to the AC
when asking for approving the relevant change to the charter.

Hoping for your (continued) membership,

Jacek Kopecky

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl20-adjuncts/

On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 18:06 -0400, Jim Hendler wrote:
> Jacek et al-
>   the more I try to follow the discussions on this list, the more 
> convinced I am that I made a mistake not to pursue my objection and 
> fight for preconditions and effects.  In all the work we are doing in 
> my lab, and with our three industrial partners, we can't even get to 
> first base without at least being able to distinguish between 
> services that change the world (book buying) and those that don't 
> (asking the cost of a book).  I've started to chime in on a couple of 
> the discussion in this list and realized that my questions would 
> equate to expressing a need to make this kind of distinction (at 
> least), which is out of scope, so I have not pushed in.
>   I am planning to pull my group out of the WG at this point, because 
> we cannot afford the participation without any of our needs being 
> addressed, but before doing so, I wanted to be absolutely sure I was 
> understanding correctly.
>   -JH
>

Received on Saturday, 10 June 2006 19:01:11 UTC