Re: Defining the meaning of wsdl:required in terms of the document, rather than a processor

David Booth wrote:
> Yesterday I accepted an action item:
> [NEW] ACTION: dbooth to define the meaning of wsdl:required in terms of
> the document, rather than processor behavior.
> 
> I mentioned on the teleconference that I thought we already had wording
> in the spec to do this, but I wasn't sure.  I've checked, and we do.
> 
> Part 1 section 3.1.1 says:
> [[
> A mandatory extension is an extension that MAY change the meaning of the
> element to which it is attached, such that the meaning of that element
> is no longer governed by this specification. Instead, the meaning of an
> element containing a mandatory extension is governed by the meaning of
> that extension. Thus, the definition of the element's meaning is
> delegated to the specification that defines the extension.
> ]]
> 
> I think that pretty well covers it.  If desired, we might wish to add a
> note like:
> [[
> It therefore follows that if a WSDL processor does not recognize or
> understand a mandatory extension that it encounters in a WSDL document,
> the WSDL processor will have no assurance of understanding the meaning
> of that WSDL document as a whole.
> ]]

The statement you quoted earlier was that only the semantics of elements
in the wsdl namespace that carry mandatory extensions could be modified
by the extensions themselves. The intent was to allow processors to
process all other portions of a WSDL document. So saying that "the WSDL
processor will have no assurance of understanding the meaning of that
WSDL document as a whole" is a bit misleading, because it seems to imply
that the entire document is unprocessable.

Also, I'm wondering if something like the following requirement would be
acceptable:

[[
A WSDL processor MUST NOT process the portions of a WSDL document that it
does not understand due to the presence of one or more mandatory extensions.
]]

Since it doesn't mention "faulting", it doesn't seem tied to a particular
processing model, nor it requires one.

Roberto

Received on Monday, 8 November 2004 18:06:13 UTC