Pointers to a few WS documents

Hi,

There are a few documents available in the webpages of various WS groups
which probably need some clarifications or enhancements regarding
internationalization. I think we should review them as a group and convey
our internationalization concerns and suggestions (if any) to the spec.
leads.

1.  XQuery  There are a few subtle internationalization issues associated
with XQuery. For example, the results of the queries corresponding to the
requirements 3.4.2 and 3.4.7 (of http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlquery-req) may get
influenced by the locale. If the relevant XQuery gets executed in a remote
node, that service provider's locale may influence the query result.
Ideally speaking, the query should be executed in the caller's locale to
maintain the remote-local transparency.

            Also, the intent of Section 3.4.19 of the above mentioned
document is not very clear to me. Is it implying that XQuery language MUST
be able to access the locale and time zone 'context' under which the
relevant query should get executed or something else? Some may consider
Section 3.4.19 is alluding to remote-local transparency.

2.  WS-I          The present version of the Basic Profile, Version 1.0 (
http://www.ws-i.org/Profiles/Basic/2003-03/BasicProfile-1.0-BdAD.html) is
completely silent about possible inter-operability issues regarding
internationalization. Section 4.1 (see also R1016) of the document provides
examples of SOAP 'faultString' (of SOAP 1.1 spec., which should be the
'faultReason' of SOAP 1.2 spec.). The document should at least mention the
problem inherent in the present SOAP specifications about the selection of
the language/locale for the 'faultString'/'faultReason'; it may also
provide a reference to the appropriate sections of our use case document.

3. WSRP     The Web Services for Remote Portlets Specifications, Working
Draft 0.92  (
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsrp) document
paid a lot of attention to internationalization. quite a few data
structures contain 'locales', and 'LocalizedString' components. It seems
the spec. uses 'locales' as explicit parameter to API invocations; the WSDL
documents of Section 14 are not available in OASIS web site, sigh!

This specifications probably demands closer scrutiny specially regarding
the following four points.

3a.   The exact definition of 'locale' used in the spec. Apparently the
spec. is using the RFC1766 language as 'locale' (see Sections 5.1.5,
5.1.10, and footnotes 6 and 7).
3b.   Section 5.1.22 mentions a problem similar to one of our use document.
If the 'desiredLocales' is empty or missing (is it optional?), the spec.
mandates that all localized string be returned. This may not be possible in
all installations.
3c.   It seems that in this spec. the desired 'locale' is passed as an
explicit parameter. Probably 'context' is a better choice for conveying
system-level environmental variables.
3d.   Section 13 lists the 'faults' that can be generated from WSRP. Some
faults can have detailed messages associated with them (like
Interface.OperationFailed). Apparently the spec. is not very clear in
specifying the localized behaviour of these 'fault' details.


Thanks,

Deb

Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2003 14:21:24 UTC