Re: Partial executability/ determinism of a Chor description language

Let's assume this refinement of the use case given by Ricky.

The buyer sends quote requests to three different suppliers, obtains the 
results, and decides which one supplier to obtain the product from. The 
decision criteria is called decision X. The buyer has absolutely no 
intention whatsoever to disclosed decision X to the world. The buyer is 
perfecly fine saying 'my decision X', but not providing any more 
meaningful information.

The supplier decides whether or not to accept the order. That decision 
is called decision Y. Let's assume a more trivial example whereby some 
suppliers do not support international orders for whatever reason.

The buyer goes into the process of identifying a buyer, the cheapest one 
of the bunch for that particular product, constructing a PO and sending 
it to the buyer. Due to technical issues the response comes back 4 hours 
later. The response says "RTFM - international orders not supported 
here". The buyer understands why the order was rejected (a common error 
code), but has just wasted 4 hours waiting for that response. Had the 
buyer read the FM upfront the buyer would not even have selected that 
particular supplier. The buyer then goes to the second supplier, 
unfortunately with the same effect (it seems that all good deals are not 
available internationally).

Now let's change it slightly. Let's assume that the supplier can, along 
with all other information indicating it's willingness to participate in 
the choreography, indicate that one of the rules for decision Y is that 
'no international orders are accepted'. Let's say there's a common way 
to express it, which may or may not be an XPath expression, and a place 
to say it. Now the buyer has the option to actually RTFM by not 
selecting that supplier up front. So instead the buyer only selects the 
suppliers that can actually fulfill the purchase order, selects the best 
one, and starts talking to that supplier directly.

So there is some benefit to knowing which decision is being made, so 
that in some cases - in this scenario Y but not X, for some suppliers 
but not all, for some buyers but not all - it is possible to determine 
the outcome before sending the message saving money by not starting any 
transaction that is doomed to fail. Is there a benefit in that capability?

arkin


Burdett, David wrote:

> Following on from this, in practice you would need to have error codes 
> in the return message that included one for "badlist" country. To 
> realize interoperability, the error codes that could be present in the 
> message data should be published in advance. In this case the sender 
> should already know that orders from a badlist country would not be 
> accepted.
>  
> I don't see what this has to do with choreography ... or am I missing 
> something.
>  
> David

Received on Friday, 30 May 2003 15:07:00 UTC