RE: TIBCO objects to last call (resend)

David

i do feel that i should draw attention to BT's strongest
requirement for this working group, highlighted by the 
Mission section of our charter:

"""
These facilities are expected to be broadly available 
and should be provided on a timely fashion. Therefore, 
this Working Group shall be schedule-driven. 
"""

Obviously we shouldn't ship something that is 
fundamentally flawed or bugged just to meet a schedule,
but i'm unconvinced that's the case here given the
issues you cite (aiui) could equally be applied to the 
original member submission for which there are several
implementations, and yet your issues are only a few weeks 
old.

However, I'm sympathetic to the obvious depth of your 
feeling regarding these issues and suggest that we 
move into Last Call, but accept your list of outstanding
issues as our first Last Call comments to be discussed 
over the next month or so. I think this is a reasonable
approach given the resolution could be in the form of 
extensions layered upon the core as it exists today.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org [mailto:public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of David Hull
Sent: 24 March 2005 14:57
To: Martin Gudgin
Cc: public-ws-addressing@w3.org; Mark Nottingham
Subject: Re: TIBCO objects to last call (resend)


Martin Gudgin wrote: 
I wasn't aware that 'I don't like the resolution to an issue' was grounds for objecting to last call. 
Was there something unclear about "Whatever the final resolution of i050 and i054, there currently remain significant questions as to the meaning of MAPs in the specification." followed by a list of specific questions which have been raised but gone unanswered?

Section 7.4.2 of the process document is silent as to members' desire to meet a particular deadline as a criterion for Last Call.  It does, however, state

Purpose: A Working Group's Last Call announcement is a signal that:
the Working Group believes that it has satisfied its relevant technical requirements (e.g., of the charter or requirements document) in the Working Draft; 
  Given the lack of substantive answers to the questions posed and to others, we don't see how we can even remotely make that statement.  It further states

Ideally, after a Last Call announcement, a Working Group receives only indications of support for the document, with no proposals for substantive change.

Clearly, this is not going to be the case should we go to LC now.

We strongly believe that going to LC at this point would be a misuse of the LC designation, and would be counterproductive in that issues which we ought to be able to resolve amongst ourselves will end up raised to the level of formal objections.  In short, we will get done sooner with a better end result if we do not go to LC now.  By "better end result" I mean technically stronger and more likely to be widely adopted, regardless of whether particular decisions fall the way any particular party would like.

We also don't like the resolution of i054, but we can talk about that if the group is willing to back away from the "Last Call at all costs" mentality and the associated procedural battles, which I for one would very much wish to avoid.  We have not yet exhausted the possibilities for resolving the various MAP-related issues (and by resolving I mean actually resolving to the satisfaction of all, as opposed to having a 20-minute discussion and taking a stab so we can mark an issue closed).  Let's focus on that instead.

The WG *has* closed all outstanding issues.

My understanding of the vote we took on Monday was that we were allowing people time to check that the resolutions entered into the documents by the editors matched the resolutions made by the WG. I have not seen any mail indicating that the editors have made any errors in this regard.

Gudge




From: public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org [mailto:public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of David Hull
Sent: 24 March 2005 00:52
To: public-ws-addressing@w3.org
Cc: Mark Nottingham
Subject: TIBCO objects to last call (resend)


This message details TIBCO's reasons for objecting to the WS-Addressing core and SOAP binding documents going to last call.  There are several specific reasons, all of which center around the Message Addressing Properties (hereafter referred to as MAPs), and particularly around issues i050 and i054, which we consider to have been closed hastily.  We have no objection to the current formulation of EPRs and indeed believe that WS-Addressing would provide considerable value on the basis of EPRs alone.

We have made our opposition to the current resolution of i054 known and have formally voted against this resolution.  We are prepared to formally object to the core and SOAP binding specifications as they currently stand on the basis of this issue.  We also note that a new proposed resolution for this putatively closed issue has appeared since the vote concerning last call was taken.  

Whatever the final resolution of i050 and i054, there currently remain significant questions as to the meaning of MAPs in the specification.  Many such questions, including those relating to the objections above, have been raised in public discussion over the past two weeks but have so far gone unanswered.  It is our opinion that several of these questions are of such a nature that if there is any significant doubt concerning them the specification is not sufficiently well-defined to be useful.  We do not claim that none of them can be answered, and in fact we hope that many of them can be answered quickly.  However, until they are, we cannot consider the discussion of the specification to be materially complete and cannot recommend putting the document out for public comment.

These questions include

Whether the MAPs are considered to contain only those properties defined in the WS-Addressing specifications or whether other specifications may amend them 
If other specifications can amend this set, in what sense may it be said to be specified by WS-Addressing 
Exactly how a future specification requiring endpoints beyond the presently defined reply and fault endpoints should define these 
In particular whether such a specification would have to define a new SOAP module to hold properties parallel to those defined in the MAPs 
How the current definition of MAPs as mandatory properties would apply to existing SOAP/HTTP interactions which have no notion of such properties 
Whether existing specifications would need to be amended to mention MAPs and/or their corresponding headers in order to leverage the asynchronous request/reply pattern to which the MAPs are evidently tailored, as suggested by the explicit mention of ReplyTo and other headers in specifications such as WS-Transfer and WS-Enumeration 
What level of MAP extensibility is actually required by the WS-Addressing charter. 
Please consider this listing as a request to open these outstanding questions as formal issues.

While we understand and indeed share the desire of the group to get to last call as quickly as reasonably possible, given the current state of the specification and the discussion around it, we regret to say that we cannot support the documents going to last call at this point, and so must object.

Received on Thursday, 24 March 2005 15:25:49 UTC