Re: Processor conformance: fault on non-conformant input

Umit, if you want to check whether a document is conformant and you are
certain your processor understands all the extensions used in the
document (to verify the extensions as well, otherwise only the mandatory
extensions), you will just instruct it to process everything it finds. 

I imagine WSDL editors would be doing that, listing error and warning
messages as their mode of failure/faulting.

As for a definition of a portion, I attempted that in my email at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2004Feb/0121.html 
and I think the plan was to say something like this somewhere in the
conformance sections of the spec.

To Bijan's worry, I don't think we allow non-mandatory extensions to
change the semantics, therefore just processing the whole thing should
suffice.

Best regards,

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Systinet Corporation
                   http://www.systinet.com/




On Tue, 2004-03-23 at 03:03, Umit Yalcinalp wrote:
> If a processor is not required to process all aspects of the WSDL 
> document, then it is impossible, technically, to find out whether a 
> document is conformant or not, because "conformant" processors may 
> choose to ignore certain portions of a document and end up not reporting 
> errors. Note that by "sheer ignorance" (as it is bliss ;-)), it is 
> equivalent to consume or ignore a specific portion of a document. If it 
> is valid/legal, you are conformant by default, if it is not, well you 
> are allowed to ignore certain portions of it. Nice!
> 
> Based on this definition, a document may not be conformant but the 
> processor will be. So, what is the purpose of defining a conformant 
> processor? A processor that can handle valid WSDL documents and more or 
> a processor that will reject invalid WSDL documents?  It seems that a 
> conformant processor is NOT the processor that may be able to reject a 
> non-conformant document by this change. That is a completely a different 
> beast, maybe a uber-conformant processor that MUST process all the WSDL 
> document and MUST fault if it is a non-conformant document. There is a 
> need to define such a processor category if our conformant processor 
> definition is not targeted to do this. I was under the impression that  
> we wanted to align the conformance of a processor to align 
> with/determine a document's conformance.
> 
> What I don't like in your change of definition is that "how a portion" 
> is defined for processing is very opaque and unfortunately meaningless 
> unless we define exactly what it is.  It is equivalent to, IMO, to 
> saying nothing at all. The problem is defining what that subset is, 
> namely the set of "portions" of a WSDL document that a conformant 
> processor MUST process. Unless we define this set precisely, which is a 
> "profile" by the way, the conformant processor definition, IMO, is not 
> going to be that definitive.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> --umit
> 
> Ps. I would like to also point out that there are two terms used in the 
> processor conformance section, 8.3. "fail" (bullet 4) and fault (in 
> other bullets). The definition of what "faulting" means (immediately 
> cease processing) is explored only in bullet 5. I suggest moving it to 
> bullet 2 as an editorial change, so that the definition comes before the 
> usage.
> 
> >
> >
> >
> > At 09:17 PM 3/22/2004 +0600, Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote:
> >
> >> OK so what's the verdict on this thread? David Booth can you
> >> please give a summary and recommendation?
> >>
> >> THanks,
> >>
> >> Sanjiva.
> >
> >

Received on Tuesday, 23 March 2004 09:16:04 UTC