Requiredness (two issues)

Hi WSDL'ers:

Two related things:

-1-

First off, I continue to believe that the "required" flag on properties
is NOT necessary.  Property values/constraints simply make the specified
values available to the runtime.  If you think about why you would ever
want to require setting a particular property, you can achieve the same
result by simply requiring a component (feature/module/binding) which
uses that property.

Any binding or SOAP module which utilizes particular properties will be
able to pull the values/constraints for those properties out of the
component model.  Certain specs may have defined default values for
properties, so if values for those properties are not expressed in the
WSDL, they would take on the defaults.  If a property is needed by a
given feature/binding/module and NOT specified in the WSDL, then this
would be an error, but I don't think that a "required" flag on the
property value/constraint helps this situation at all.  Understanding a
particular feature/binding/module implies understanding the property set
which is required.

I propose we pull this out of the spec, which would simplify both the
prose and the model.

-2-

Second, reading through the way we specify the co-occurrence constraint
between property/constraint and property/value, I found it a little
confusing.  I think it would be nice to explicitly say something up
front along the lines of:

"{value} OPTIONAL.  The value of the property.  If {value} is specified,
the effect is to force a particular value for the {constraint} property
(see below)."

Thoughts?

--Glen

Received on Monday, 26 July 2004 12:18:21 UTC