INT: Intermediary Discussion

There has been significant discussion ( and disagreement! <g> ) about the
term 'intermediary' with respect to XP. This mail is intended to stimulate
discussion of this term with the goal of having a new proposal for a
glossary definition by Feb 6. If you start any new threads on this topic,
please prefix them with 'INT:' so people can pick them out easily amongst
the other traffic on this list.

The glossary[1] currently defines the following term



XP intermediary

An application that can act as both an XP sender and an XP receiver with the
purpose of forwarding an XP message along an XP message path.




Various people have commented that intermediaries come in various forms.

1.    Intermediaries in the TCP stack. For example standard IP routers.

2.    Intermediaries in the HTTP stack. For example an HTTP caching proxy.

3.    Intermediaries in the XP 'stack'. For example ??????

4.    Intermediaries in the 'B2B stack'. For example a brokerage that acts
as a go between for purchasers and vendors.

I think it would be useful to provide definitions for all of the above as it
makes explicit which kind of intermediaries are in-scope for XP and which
are not. However, providing example intermediaries for the XP 'stack' is
difficult as at this stage we don't know for sure what will be part of the
XP core and therefore do not know which services may need to be provided by
intermediaries.

I'd like the discussion try to formulate the following;

a) proposed definitions of 1-4 above

b) Examples of intermediaries in 1-4 above ( beyond those already given )

I'd rather have some discussion before proposing defintions for 1-4 but if
people feel they can't operate that way please let me know and I'll provide
some definitions for us to kick around.

Flame away,

Gudge

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xp-reqs/#N3030

Received on Thursday, 1 February 2001 03:44:15 UTC