Minority objection to features and properties

The WSDL 2.0 Part 1 Last Call Working Draft[1] contains definitions for
Feature components[2] and Property component[3], two related constructs.
IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp. object to their inclusion in WSDL 2.0
specification for several reasons;

1.	They significantly exceed the scope of the input specification
WSDL 1.1[4].
2.	They overlap entirely with other specifications currently
external to the W3C[5,6,7]
3. 	Features and properties overlap substantially with XML-based
extensibility mechanisms, making them redundant and significantly
complicating the language.
4. 	We believe features and properties will prove to be confusing to
WSDL users and will often be misused or unused.
5. 	XML-based extensibility is backward compatible with WSDL 1.1,
which has extension points but no features or properties.  Thus spec
authors will have to write different extension mechanisms for WSDL 1.1
and for WSDL 2.0 in order to take advantage of features and properties.
6. 	There is little evidence that extension authors will use them
instead of XML-based extensibility.  There is abundant evidence that
extension authors will use XML-based extensibility instead.

Regards

Martin Gudgin, Microsoft Corp.
Sanjiva Weerawarana, IBM Corp.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/wsdl20
[2] http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/wsdl20#Feature
[3] http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/desc/wsdl20#Property
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-wsdl-20010315
[5]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/ws-policy.asp
[6]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/ws-policyasserti
ons.asp
[7]
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/ws-policyattachm
ent.asp

Received on Thursday, 29 July 2004 11:07:29 UTC