RFC: operation safety as semantic annotation?

Dear all,

as you may know, the specification for Semantic Annotations for WSDL and
XML Schema [1] (SAWSDL) moving to CR. In our institute (my W3C hats are
off), we work on Semantic Web Services, and we plan to use SAWSDL as the
glue between our semantic description language and WSDL.

For my work, I will need to know the semantic description, i.e. what the
various service operations and data mean and do. One piece that I need
is operation safety. Currently, that is realized in WSDL as an extension
attribute, wsdlx:safe="boolean", with the default being false.

Operation safety is, at least to me, a clear semantic annotation. It
says nothing about the structure of the interface, instead it indicates
what the operation does (or rather, what it doesn't do - any side
effects or additional obligations in Web Architecture speak).

I would propose that we change the syntax from wsdlx:safe="true"  to 
sawsdl:modelReference="http://www.w3.org/2006/01/wsdl-extensions#SafeInteraction"
I know it's much longer, but please bear with me. 8-)

The WSDL Interface Operation {safety} property can stay as it is, only
its XML representation would change to "the IRI for SafeInteraction (as
above) will be included among the IRIs that are the value of
sawsdl:modelReference". The URI above is currently used in the RDF
mapping of WSDL to represent the safety property.

At worst, the people hand-writing and reading WSDL would have their
lives just a bit harder. At best, this would blend right in with the
plethora of other semantic annotations. Certainly, from my own point of
view, having safety as a semantic annotation as opposed to an extension
attribute would make my life just a bit easier.

Thanks for your consideration,
Jacek

[1] http://w3.org/tr/sawsdl

Received on Monday, 29 January 2007 15:03:41 UTC