RE: Service Discovery comments

Hi Katia (and Hugo please note glossary change below),

(Catching up on editorial changes.)  Thanks for the comments.

At 07:16 PM 1/7/2004 -0500, Katia Sycara wrote:


>Here are my comments on the service discovery related parts of the document.
>In " " I enclose text from the docment and I indicate desired changes by
>enclosing them in *...*. I justify the suggested changes in subsequesnt
>comments, where appropriate.
>   --Katia
>----------------------------------------------------------
>1. section 2.3.3.2.1.
>  "Discovery is the act of locating *a Web service through its *
>machine-processable  description that may have been previously unknown and
>that meets certain functional criteria"
>
>Katia comment: the current definition states that the discovery is the acto
>of locating a machine-processable description of a Web service ...
>The goal is to discover the service rather than its description so I think
>that stating this explicitly in the definition is preferable

I think it's important to be clear that the *act* of discovery is the act 
of finding a *description*, but you're right that the *goal* is to find a 
service, I've changed the definition to:

"Discovery is the act of locating a machine-processable description of a 
Web service that may have been previously unknown and that meets certain 
functional criteria.  The goal is to find an appropriate Web service."

Hugo: This will need to be updated in the glossary.

>2. section 2.3.3.2.2 Relationships to other elements
>
>  "Discovery is *realized by*
>    Matching a set of functional and other criteria with a set of service
>descriptions"
>
>Katia comment: since we do not have a clear definition of an act but we do
>use *realized by* quite often, this seems more appropriate

Good idea.  Done.

>3. section 3.1 Step 2 bullet 3
>
>I propose to get rid of the parenthesis with "(excepting the network address
>of the particular service)"
>
>Katia comment: it is not clear why this parenthetical text is there. If we
>keep it in bullet 3 we need to add it in bullet 4 where it is currently
>missing

Done.  I added it to bullet 4 instead of taking it out of bullet 3, since 
the need for this exception had been a point stressed earlier by others.

>4. section 3.1.
>The paragraph after Step 4 starting with "The overall process of engaging a
>Web service was outlined in the introduction and included the following
>steps ..." is redundant and can be omitted

I think that was an editing glitch that has now been fixed.

>5. section 3.1.1
>In 1.b.
>"The requester entity (either a human or a requester agent) specifies
>criteria *and sends them to the discovery service to enable selection of a
>Web service description* based on its associated functional description and
>potentially other characteristics". Etc...
>
>Katia comment: the text in * * must be added since step (c) talks about the
>discovery service returns one or more Web service descriptions that meet the
>criteria. The discovery service must have obtained the requester's criteria.

Done, though I shortened the wording a bit: "The requester entity (either a 
human or the requester agent) supplies criteria to the discovery service . 
. . ."

>6. section 3.1
>Step 2 typo (p. 76)
>"Step 2 also requires that the parties agree on the service description that
>is to be used. However, since the requester entity obtained the Web service
>description in step *1.c* [instead of the current 1.3] in effect ..."

Fixed.  Thanks.

>7. section 3.1.3
>
>I do not completely agree that "people are skeptical in allowing machines to
>make judgement decisions for them ...." (counterexamples abound, but let us
>not get into that discussion).

Ok, I've softened that to instead say: "Since people may not trust a 
machine to make significant judgement decisions that could put themselves 
or their organizations at risk . . . ."

>We can augment the current text by saying that
>"In automated discovery, there are two cases for mitigating the trust issue:
>1 agents could autonomously discover services and then, show them to the
>human user to choose.
>2. Agents autonomously discover services and then the requester agent, upon
>receiving the set of discovered services can perform some sort of checking,
>for example searching the Dunn and Bradstreet registry for the service
>providers' quality rating."

Good idea.  I've added it.

>8. section 3.1.4.
>"At present there are *three* leading viewpoints on how a discovery service
>should be conceived: as a registry or as an index or as a *peer to peer
>process*."
>
>Katia comment: peer to peer discovery would be useful in ad hoc and dynamic
>networks, especially for military applications. We may want to mention the
>p2p case here for completeness.

Good idea.  Added.

>If people agree, I can write the explanatory text.

Yes, please provide a paragraph for inclusion.  I've added an editorial 
note as a placeholder.

>9. section 3.1.4.
>
>I disagree that UDDI is an example of the registry approach. . . .

Good point.  I've changed the sentence to: "UDDI is often seen as an 
example of the registry approach.  However, as noted below, it depends on 
how it is used."

>10. 3.1.4 (p. 78)  "indices" instead of "indexes"

Both spellings are correct:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=indexes
It's a matter of personal taste.

>and also in the fifth bullet Different indices could *provide* (instead of 
>*provided*) .....

Fixed.  Thanks.


-- 
David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Saturday, 17 January 2004 13:32:53 UTC