RE: Requester/provider agent/entity terminology

Maybe I should expand on this a bit.  Although the "people stuff" may be
a bit less neat because it may not be real clear exactly what
technological implementations are or could be involved with the
relationships or functions, nonetheless this is precisely the feature
that I think is worth preserving, since it gives a framework on which to
hang future technology.  And, as Frank points out, these issues are a
big part of the business landscape.  Including them in the architecture
makes it a LOT easier to see where there are gaps in the technology.
That's a very important aspect of the architecture, in my view -- and I
believe that doing this is an explicit part of our deliverables.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Cutler, Roger (RogerCutler)
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 12:58 PM
To: Francis McCabe; Newcomer, Eric
Cc: David Booth; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: RE: Requester/provider agent/entity terminology



I strongly agree with Frank on this.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Francis McCabe
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 11:24 AM
To: Newcomer, Eric
Cc: David Booth; www-ws-arch@w3.org
Subject: Re: Requester/provider agent/entity terminology



Eric:
   I think it would be a big mistake to take people out of the 
architecture. It might be neater from a technological POV but it would 
also be less relevant. A big part of security, trust, e-commerce, 
supply chain mgt, management etc. is *about* people.

On Jan 24, 2004, at 3:42 AM, Newcomer, Eric wrote:

>
> This is a great step forward in consistency for us. Maybe we can talk 
> about this at the F2F because the more I read it (and maybe it's 
> clearer now than it was) the more I want to avoid including the 
> concepts of people and organizations.  If we were to deal with only a 
> single kind of entity - the software kind - we would be simpler and 
> perhaps more consistent still.
>
> Eric
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-ws-arch-request@w3.org [mailto:www-ws-arch-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of Francis McCabe
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 11:56 AM
> To: David Booth
> Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Requester/provider agent/entity terminology
>
>
>
> The trouble with thing is that in normal English usage it refers to
> physical objects, and certainly not actions or abstract potential for 
> action.
>
> One of the ramifications of the word entity is one of cohesion and
> wholeness. In fact, again in normal English usage, entity is more 
> abstract than person or organization; although entity is sometimes 
> used to denote organizations.
>
> I do not much like the RFC version of the resource definition. It
> sounds like it was thrown together without much thought.
>
> However, I recognize that its slippery and probably not worth losing a

> whole lot of sleep over.
>
> On Jan 21, 2004, at 5:42 PM, David Booth wrote:
>
>> I believe I've finished making our terminology consistent in our WSA
>> document[1].  Informally:
>>         provider agent -- the agent that realizes a Web service
>>         requester agent -- the agent that interacts with a provider 
>> agent
>>         provider entity -- the person or org. owning the provider
>> agent
>>         requester entity -- the person or org. owning the requester
>> agent
>>
>>         service requester -- (ambiguous; to be avoided in this doc)
>>         service provider -- (ambiguous; to be avoided in this doc)
>>
>> As a result, there were a MANY small changes I made along the way.
>> Most weren't worth noting, but a few I wanted to mention:
>>
>> Changed some occurrences of the word "entity" when it wasn't
>> referring to our defined term "requester entity" or "provider 
>> entity".
>>
>> Tweeked the concept description of "service" accordingly.
>>
>> Deleted "A resource is an entity" from the concepts definition of
>> "resource", in order to avoid confusing it with our "person or 
>> organization" use of the term "entity".  Since a resource can be 
>> anything, I think we can probably do without the statement.  Frank, 
>> do you want to push back on this change, or are you okay with this?
>>
>> The term "service" (as a noun) was used in two different ways: (a) to

>> refer to a task ("X asked Y to perform a particular service"); or (b)

>> to refer to the thing that performs the task ("X sent a message to
>> Y's service").  I've tried to changes uses of sense (a) to use "task"

>> instead.
>>
>> Added concept definitions of "requester entity" and "provider
>> entity".  They are a little meager.  Frank may want to fill them out 
>> better, but I ran out of time tonight.
>>
>> Whew!
>>
>> 1.
>> http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/%7Echeckout%7E/2002/ws/arch/wsa/wd-wsa-arch-
>> review2.html
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Booth
>> W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
>> Telephone: +1.617.253.1273
>>
>

Received on Saturday, 24 January 2004 14:39:12 UTC