Issue 6692 - The Delivery Element

Hi all,
I posted a new Proposal to the WIKI for Issue 6692.

http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/ra/wiki/Proposals_for_6692

Also, as we look at this issue there seems to be two sub-issues here.

1.      Keeping or removing the Delivery Element

2.      Keeping or removing the Mode Attribute

In terms of Keeping the Delivery Element:

There seems to be two different sets of information being defined within a subscription message.

a.      Lifecycle information associated with the Subscription, for example EndTo.

b.      Lifecycle information associated with the Notifications, for example NotifyTo.

Currently these two distinct sets of information (and all extensions to these sets) are separated through the use of the Delivery Element.  Things inside the Delivery Element are to do with the notification lifecycle, things that are outside are to do with the subscription lifecycle.

If you remove the Delivery element, aren't you in essence deliberately obfuscating things that are already clearly separated?  What is the real value of jumbling together things that are already separated out?

a.      It seems important to have a clear separation in the protocol between the lifecycle of the subscription and the lifecycle of the Notifications - this is what the delivery element does.  Without it, you will get the two lifecycles confused as we are already doing - for example, when we say If something applies to NotifyTo it should always apply to EndTo - while this may be true we are forgetting that these represent two totally different lifecycles and therefore have two totally different sets of use cases.

b.      There needs to be a way so that extensions can be provided to each and allow for easy understanding as to what lifecycle the extension applies to.

It seems to me that it is worth keeping the delivery element for its value in providing this separation of lifecycles.

--Geoff