Re: Multiple inputs and multiple outputs

Drew McDermott wrote:

>   [Yuzhong Qu" <yzqu@seu.edu.cn>]
>   As we know, a process in DAML-S can have multiple inputs and multiple (conditional)outputs.
>   (From http://www.daml.org/services/owl-s/1.0/Process.owl
>   http://www.daml.org/services/owl-s/0.9/Process.owl)
>
>   1. In the case of  multiple inputs
>
>       It seems to me that the process specified should take multiple
>       inputs satisfying corresponding type constraint.
>       Am I right?
>
>Yes.
>
>       But, how do you know the exact number of inputs? You just know
>       what you know, maybe there is another statement about a new
>       input (another input may be specified in other place) due to
>       the openness of the Semantic Web (it's not a closed world).
>
>Good point.  We really need a fixed list of inputs and another of outputs.
>[It would be interesting denial-of-service attack to tell a service
>that it needed another input and have it then stall because no one is
>supplying it. :)]
>
Although this may be an interesting theoretical argument, I do not quite 
agree to the fact, that for a particular process,  there may be inputs 
which might not be visible and are needed. I do not even envisage such a 
condition, because the process model is not the only model that handles 
these parameters. Infact the process model is just an abstract 
representation. We have to remember that there is a grounding model as 
well, which will take care of these details.for concrete process 
execution. If the specification of these multiple inputs located at 
multiple places is made visible in the grounding, then I do not see any 
problem.

More comments on this welcome.

Cheers,

Monika
-- 
**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**
Monika Solanki
Software Technology Research Laboratory(STRL)
De Montfort University
Hawthorn building, H00.18
The Gateway
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK

phone: +44 (0)116 250 6170 intern: 6170
email: monika@dmu.ac.uk
web: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~monika
**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**>><<**

Received on Monday, 29 September 2003 05:07:53 UTC