RE: proposed revision text for sect 1.5.3

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christopher B Ferris [mailto:chrisfer@us.ibm.com]
> Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2003 10:12 AM
> To: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: proposed revision text for sect 1.5.3
> 
> 

Basically, +1 to Chris' proposal -- I agree with the rationale and think
that the proposal is an improvement.
> 
> <proposed>
> 1.5.3 Service Description
> The mechanics of the message exchange are documented in a 
> Web service description (WSD). (See Figure 1.) The WSD is an 
> extensible  machine 
> processable specification of the message infosets and features that 
> comprise the Web service's interface and the binding(s) of those 
> message infosets 
> and features to the serialization format(s) and transfer or transport 
> protocol(s) 
> supported by the Web service's endpoint(s). It also specifies the 
> set of endpoints that each expose a network addressable binding to a 
> specific serialization format and transport or transfer 
> protocol of the 
> Web service interface to the service functionality implemented by the 
> provider agent. 
> </proposed>

A couple of points.  First, this section 1.5 is the infamous "what is a web
service" section, so the definition of WSD should be very narrowly focused
on what the minimally necessary degree of description MUST be to be a web
service, not  what the criteria  for a good "web services description
language" SHOULD be. So, "extensible" is not really necessary here, although
of course WSDL should be extensible.  Sorry if that is overly pedantic :-)
On the other hand, let's make sure we hit the all  basic points of the WSDL
conceptual model that we really need -- the formal description of a set of
concrete operations, collected into one or more machine-processable
interface, bound to a specific network protocol, and associated with an
addressable endpoint.  Then there's Roger's point about the sentence being
awkward ...

So, a proposed further tweak:

 1.5.3 Service Description
The mechanics of the message exchange are documented in a Web service
description (WSD). (See Figure 1.) The WSD is a formal specification of a
Web service's interface: the operations exposed to external users, an
interface definition of the XML infosets of the data that is passed to and
from the service, the bindings of the interface onto specific messaging
protocols, and the set of "endpoints," i,e. associations of the interface
definitions with the network address of an agent that implements the
interface.

Received on Saturday, 31 May 2003 16:44:49 UTC