- From: Yaron Y. Goland <ygoland@bea.com>
- Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 10:35:48 -0700
- To: "'WS Chor Public'" <public-ws-chor@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <GMEOJGJFKALPDCNPFMDOAEAMDFAA.ygoland@bea.com>
MessageI'm proposing something significantly simpler - state transitions
should be triggered by message types. So if you send operation foo from port
nippy of service bar to participant Alpha then the mere fact of receiving
foo/nippy/bar specifies a state transition. E.g.
Beta (exclusive split)---foo/nippy/bar---->Alpha---baz/back/rack---> Beta
|
--------------furby/nippy/bar-->Alpha-(parallel)---yacky/bac
k/rack--->Beta
|
-
---------ippy/back/rack---->Gamma
In this choreography the only necessary information is the operation, port
and service. Identification of this triple is provided implicitly by the
WSDL so the choreography doesn't need to use XPATHs.
Yaron
-----Original Message-----
From: Cummins, Fred A [mailto:fred.cummins@eds.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 2:46 PM
To: Jean-Jacques Dubray; 'Jean-Jacques Dubray'; 'Martin Chapman'; 'Yaron
Y. Goland'; 'WS Chor Public'
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
JJ,
I'm not sure what the appropriate XML expression of state transitions
should be. Essentially, each
participant must have a number of possible states. Transitions between
the states must be
specified in terms of the message types sent or received. Each message
has a sender and
a receiver. This is not a hierarchichal structure.
We may also need to consider that a message sent by participant A to
participant B implies
that participant C is in a particular state, e.g., a seller notifies a
buyer that the product has been
turned over to the carrier.
Fred
-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Jacques Dubray [mailto:jjd@eigner.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 4:59 PM
To: Cummins, Fred A; 'Jean-Jacques Dubray'; 'Martin Chapman'; 'Yaron Y.
Goland'; 'WS Chor Public'
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
Fred:
You are correct, the state of the choreography is immaterial and as you
pointed out the only state that is accessible is the public state of each
participant.
What would be wrong if we were to choose XPath predicates to express
conditions that specify the different paths a choreography can take? I am
all for hiding the XPath behind some logical construct like it was suggested
for BPSS that has the notion of a “logical document” behind which either
different physical documents or the same physical document with 2 different
XPath predicates.
Could you be more specific on how you would see this kind of logic
expressed?
Thanks,
JJ-
-----Original Message-----
From: Cummins, Fred A [mailto:fred.cummins@eds.com]
Sent: Dienstag, 1. Juli 2003 16:07
To: Jean-Jacques Dubray; 'Martin Chapman'; 'Yaron Y. Goland'; 'WS Chor
Public'
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
JJ,
I think we should avoid talking about the "state of the choreography,"
and focus on the public state
of the participants. By "public state" I mean the state that will be
expressed in the choreography
and that the other participant(s) are expected to know about and
understand.
The public state of a participant changes when it sends or receives a
message. The participant must
also keep track of the perceived state of the other participant(s) which
is generally reflected in the last
message received from a participant. When a participant sends a
message, the participant will typically
change its state to waiting for a response. The responses it should be
anticipating are constrained by the
choreography specification. When a participant receives a message, its
state should
reflect that it is processing the message. If it receives another
message, the choreography should
define what should happen, either explicitly or by default--typically it
is an error but the action could be
specified.
When a message is received, the recipient is no longer waiting for a
response, but will be processing the message
to determine its next action. From a choreography perspective, its next
action is constrained by
its state and the perceived new state of the sender. The perceived
state of the sender is determined by the
content/semantics of the message. How this is determined is an
implementation issue. The choreography
only needs to define the possible alternatives and the possible
responses.
The perceived state of the message sender requires interpretation of the
message. This could be specified in
the choreography, but then the choreography must become a programming
language in order to process
various formats and potentially interpret the message in the current
context of the exchange. I do not believe
this is appropriate. The choreograpy should only deal with the result of
the message interpretation. In other
words, the message is processed by the recipient application, and the
result is the basis for determining
compliance with the choreography specification as well as the acceptable
subsequent actions.
Thus the choreography says, "Based on your current public state, if you
interpet this message as A, then you can
respond with M or N, if you interpret it as B, then you must respond
with P or Q." The choreography constrains
the exchange, but it does not interpret the message. Similarly, the
choreograpy would define, "if you send a message
type M when you perceive the recipient to be in state G, then you should
expect to get back either X or Y and other responses are not valid."
Fred
-----Original Message-----
From: Jean-Jacques Dubray [mailto:jjd@eigner.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 2:13 PM
To: 'Martin Chapman'; 'Yaron Y. Goland'; 'WS Chor Public'
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
Yaron:
I don’t understand your rationale here, the only way the state of a
choreography can advance is by exchanging a message between two parties. The
only way two parties can agree on the state of the choreography is by
looking at the content of the message(s) (telepathy not being an option here
;-). If there was a piece of information known by only one party that would
advance the state of the choreography, this party would have to send a
message to tell this information to the other party in order for their state
to be aligned.
Incidentally, we are not talking about “routing” messages here but
rather “choreography state”. If “this message contains this value” then “the
choreography will continue like this” else “continue like that”. Once a
message comes in the choreography definition could not care less where it is
routed. This will typically be a private decision. Of course the line may
blur when we talk about multi-party choreographies.
JJ-
-----Original Message-----
From: public-ws-chor-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-ws-chor-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Martin Chapman
Sent: Montag, 30. Juni 2003 17:33
To: Yaron Y. Goland; WS Chor Public
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
BPEL duplicates the work of java, c#, c++, ...... but the authors had
their reasons. Therefore I don't find that to be a compelling argument.
Simple parseable if-then-else statements seem a necessity IMHO.
Martin.
-----Original Message-----
From: public-ws-chor-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-ws-chor-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Yaron Y. Goland
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 2:19 PM
To: WS Chor Public
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
I agree with #1 wholeheartedly. In fact I would like to see our
priorities be:
#1 - Be able to define and validate at runtime a choreography
without reference to any outside facility such as BPEL
#2 - After we have successfully shipped #1 out the door then we
would worry about how to directly integrate our work with BPEL
As for #2, I respectfully disagree.
I believe that including the ability to make machine readable state
change decisions (e.g. decision logic) based on the contents of a message
will have a number of detrimental consequences:
#1 - In real world choreographies it is exceedingly rare that
the decision regarding how to deal with a message is made exclusively based
on the contents of the message itself. Even in the most simplistic scenario,
a message router, there is almost universally a recourse to a routing table
which is fully dynamic. So message control logic expressed exclusively based
on message content (which is the only platform and implementation
independent way of doing it) will always be incomplete and thus of little
utility.
#2 - The only way to define a useful message control mechanism
to allow for routing on message contents will require the introduction of a
full programming language since anything but the most trivial scenario will
require sophisticated data handling capabilities. This quickly takes us down
the course of inventing our own programming language and thus duplicating
the work BPEL is doing.
As such I believe that our solution should not specify a machine
readable mechanism for specifying how a routing decision is made in the
choreography graph. Rather the logic should be specified via text. It will
then be the job for a latter group to perhaps specify a mechanism by which
one could point at code (such as BPEL) that could encode the actual decision
logic.
Just my two cents,
Yaron
-----Original Message-----
From: Fletcher, Tony [mailto:Tony.Fletcher@choreology.com]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 4:45 AM
To: Burdett, David; Yaron Y. Goland; WS Chor Public
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
Dear Yaron, David and others,
Out of this debate I would like re-assurance that we are agreeing
to support the following two 'propositions' :
1) The WS-Choreography language should be usable on its own, as
well as usable in unison with BPEL4WS.
Note :use alone and use with BPEL4WS are two separate goals.
Personally I would be happy if we tried to support them both and I think it
makes sense to try to do so.
2) The next state of a choreography can be determined by some
value in a field of an incoming message.
Please refer to the attached slide for a simple example. Not that
how the supplier determines the accept or reject value for the result field
is hidden. However, at the buyer side the next step in the Choreography is
determined by the value of this field. It seems to me that Choreographies
will not be comprehensible (to humans - machines can be made to accept
anything!) with out this sort of facility.
Note: This should be possible both when the WS-Choreography is
used alone, and when used together with BPEL4WS to expand on some (or all)
of the roles. This is so that the WS-Choreography language can be used on
its own (at least initially) to design choreographies - and as a means of
agreeing a design amongst interested parties.
One potential solution to these requirements is to copy some of
the syntax and semantics from BPEL4WS into the WS-Choreography language, but
there may also be other approaches.
Best Regards Tony
A M Fletcher
Cohesions 1.0 (TM)
Business transaction management software for application
coordination
Choreology Ltd., 13 Austin Friars, London EC2N 2JX UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 76701787 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7670 1785 Mobile: +44
(0) 7801 948219
tony.fletcher@choreology.com (Home: amfletcher@iee.org)
-----Original Message-----
From: public-ws-chor-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-ws-chor-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Burdett, David
Sent: 07 June 2003 06:31
To: Yaron Y. Goland; WS Chor Public
Subject: RE: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
Yaron
Several detailed comments (with alternative suggested wording)
are included inline below. I would also add another few requirements ...
"The WS-Chor choreography definition MUST provide mechanisms by
which new choreography definitions can be composed out of other choreography
definitions". The use case for this is that you might have a choreography
that defines how to place an order, you also might have another choreography
that defines how to send an invoice. If you then want to define another
choreography that defines how you place an order that is followed by one to
send an invoice, then a composition capability would allow the original
choreographies to be reused. Another consideration on this is that there a
many different functionally equivalent ways of placing an order. Similarly
there are several functionally equivalent ways of sending an in invoice, so
it would really be useful to be able to compose a choreography that said
something like "Do one of n ways of placing an order, followed by doing one
of n ways of placing an invoice".
"The WS-Chor choreography definition MUST provide mechanisms by
which the execution of one choreography definition is dependent on the
execution of the instance of some other choreography definition". The use
case for this is where you want to execute a choreography that determines
the current state of processing of some earlier choreography. The "query"
choreography can only validly be executed if there is some earlier instance
of the a choreography that can be referenced.
The following couple of requirements are ones that have been
discussed much earlier on the list however I am not sure that we really want
to do them, at least not initially, but I do think they are worth discussing
...
"The WS Choreography specification MUST provide standardized,
reusable choreography definitions that allow one role to determine another
roles state of processing of a choreography instance, no matter what
choreography definition was being followed."
"The WS Choreography specification MUST provide standardized,
reusable choreography definitions that allow one role to request another
role to restart the processing of a "stalled" choreography instance, no
matter what choreography definition was being followed." This could simply
be a request to resend some earlier message that got lost.
The rationale for both of these is that querying the status of a
choreography and re-starting a choreography will be common requirements for
many (but not all) choreographies and therefore having a standard way of
doing these functions will make choreographies easier to design and develop.
As stated earlier, more comments inline below.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Yaron Y. Goland [mailto:ygoland@bea.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 4:28 PM
To: WS Chor Public
Subject: Requirements: Decision Points Requirement Proposals
I propose the following requirements be added to the
requirements document:
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST provide
mechanisms to
enable a choreography to specify that a process in a particular
role MUST
send zero, one or more messages from a statically defined set of
messages in
parallel, serial or any combination of the two.
<DB> A couple of comments:
1. I think a role that MUST send zero messages doesn't work as
if the role MUST send zero messages, then why is it in the choreography.
2. Why do you use the term "description format" instead of the
simpler "definition' because, aren't the properties you seek a
characteristic of the definition rather than the format of the definition.
3. The first sentence is circular as it says ... "The WS-Chor
choreography description format MUST enable a choreography ..." without
specifying what a choreography is.
4. I think you mean when you say a "statically defined set of
messages" that the actual messages definitions that can be sent are finite
in number and from a proscribed list. There has been a lot of discussion on
the idea of variability in the detailed message content which means that
limiting a choreography to specific message formats will inhibit
choreography reuse. Instead I thinkt that we should refer to "Message Types"
or "Message Families" rather than "messages".
5. This requirement is also very similar to the next so my
alternative is described below
</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST be able to
describe
decision points where a process in a particular role MAY send
zero, one or
more messages from a statically defined set of messages in
parallel, serial
or any combination of the two.
<DB>So how about the following requirement that combines the
previous two and takes into account the comments I made ...
"The WS-Chor choreography definition MUST provide mechanisms
that define the sequence in which one or more messages types are exchanged
between two or more roles either in parallel, serially or any combination of
the two, together with the conditions that cause those messages to be
sent."</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST be able to
describe who is
to receive a message by referencing their role.
<DB>I would add the sender to this definition to give ... "The
WS Choreography definition MUST be able to describe who the sender of a
message is and who the receiver should be by referencing their role." The
rationale for this is that what you do with a message may well depend on the
role of the sender ... assuming that the same message can be sent by
different roles.</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST make it
possible to specify
a role's binding to an actual web service instance either
statically, when a
web service using that choreography is deployed, or dynamically
at run time.
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST provide
mechanisms to allow
messages to be sent to a particular member of a set of web
services in the
same role.
[Ed Note: What I'm very inelegantly trying to capture is the
idea that if
you are running an auction service and you just found out that
one of the
bidders isn't qualified to bid you need a way to say things like
"I'm now
going to send out an unsolicited 'get lost you dead beat'
message to one web
service that is in the role of bidder." This could then trigger
a whole set
of messages back and forth between the auction service and the
dead beat
bidder, the choreography needs some way to capture the fact that
you are
still talking to the same member of the role group.]
<DB>This example introduces the idea of a role group, which I
don't *think* we need. If we take this use case, then you can actually
consider it as an internal "business process" problem, for example:
The auctioneer has a business process that consists of a set of
separate individual identical choreographies between the auctioneer and the
bidder where each choreography instance would take the following form ...
AUCTIONEER BIDDER
Bid Invite ------->
Either ...
Get Lost --------->
... or ...
<--------------- Bid
... etc ...
The fact that there are several bidders involved is something
that only the auctioneer needs to be concerned of.
This means that this is really a business process (e.g. BPEL )
problem rather than a choreography problem especially as the auctioneer is
in complete control of what goes on. For example, the auctioneer could treat
all the interactions as being part of one choreography by using the same
identifier for the correlation of all the messages irrespective of the
bidder.
Now there may be a use case where you really do the need the
variability, but I can't think of one. On the other hand, if we can avoid
this variability, then it will simplify the specification we need to write
significantly.
</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST NOT require
that the logic
used by a sender in a decision point to decide how to act be
exposed in the
choreography.
<DB>There's a corollary, I think, that says something like ...
"The WS-Chor choreography definition MUST enable the results of decisions
made by one role that affect the behavior of another role to be communicated
to the other role." This is really about the transmission of relevant state
information between roles.</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST enable the
annotation of
all actions with human readable descriptions.
<DB>I agree but would go further and replace the last phrase
with "... with clear semantic definitions." Something might be human
readable but that does not mean it explains the purpose well.</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format MUST provide an
abstract
mechanism where by the logic used to make a decision at a
decision point can
be expressed through reference to a WSBPEL abstract or
executable process or
similar machine readable logic.
<DB>I don't have an alternative definition, but this
pre-supposes a binding to WSBPEL that we might (or might not) want to make
unless and until we collectively (i.e. WSBPEL and WSCHOR) work out what the
goals and relationships of each activity will be.</DB>
The WS-Chor choreography description format base specification
MUST NOT
specify bindings for the abstract mechanism used to reference
machine
readable logic, rather extension specifications on top of the
base
specification MUST be used.
<DB>As a general comment, we could do with developing
definitions of various terms, e.g. "decision point", "base specification"
which although quite intuitive, could be open to miss-interpretation.</DB>
I would appreciate it if objections to these requirements were
stated in the
form of alternate proposals. It's easy to say why something is
wrong, it's a
lot harder to spend the time to specify what is right.
Yaron
Received on Wednesday, 2 July 2003 13:35:57 UTC