Potential issue around ws-security and wsdl definitions

Hi all,

I wanted to potentially raise an issue around liaison with oasis
ws-security.  ws-security does not currently provide wsdl definitions for
the security elements exchanged.  There is a discussion list around
describing qualities of service.  I think it would be a good thing to ask
oasis ws-security tc if they could provide wsdl definitions as part of their
v1 output.  Obviously this is a very delicate area, and we don't want to
annoy them.  If there isn't a strong majority within our group, then I
wouldn't want to proceed either.  This certainly appears to be an
architectural area.  It appears the key issue is around timing of when to
provide description - either at the same time as the soap definitions or
later.

I think this is also a "web service spec" best practice - Descriptions
should be provided at the same time as runtime extensions.

Some potential wording suggestion

"Dear OASIS WS-Security TC,

The W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group would like to express it's
concern around the lack of WSDL definitions for WS-Security elements in the
first version of the WS-Security product.  We would like to encourage the
WS-Security group to take up this piece of work in the first version of it's
product.  It appears that the issue is not so much the "goodness" of such a
thing, rather the timing is the issue.  There are a variety of rationale for
including description in v1: 1) To ensure that the runtime aspects can be
described in a reasonable manner - it would be unfortunate if some headers
were difficult to describe in wsdl; 2) To promote interoperability - bodies
such as W3C and WS-I believe that interoperable descriptions are a
requirement to interoperability.
"

Cheers,
Dave

Received on Wednesday, 16 October 2002 11:41:12 UTC