Re: TIBCO objects to last call

Oracle is sympathetic to Tibco's concerns, specifically we agree that:
1) Some critical issues have been closed hastily in a hurry to go to
Last Call. In our opinion the unreasonable schedule specified in the
charter (the so called "fast-track" approach) is to blame for this.
2) Going to Last Call should not be a goal in itself. If concerns are
expressed whose resolutions may result in changes that require us to go
through yet another Last Call, then we should examine our decision to go
to LC carefully. We would rather see one LC period for the specs rather
than multiple such LC periods. The concerns laid out in David's email
regarding the ramifications of MAP extensibility (or lack thereof) are
significant enough that it may change the specifications in ways that
may require another LC period. These concerns are worth considering and
are a result of the particular resolution adopted by the WG for issue i054.

We do appreciate the fact that the WS-Addressing specification(s) is
(are) needed urgently, but we believe that WS-Addressing is very
fundamental to Web services infrastructure and it is worthwhile to spend
the time to get it right.

-Anish
--

David Hull wrote:
>   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 17:06:19 UTC