Re: Untargetted blocks (was Re: Must understand mustUnderstand proposal)

First, thank you Stuart for pointing me to the relevant text. Indeed
they haven't disappeared, I was looking for the URI pointing to them
and I missed them yesterday night...

* Jean-Jacques Moreau <moreau@crf.canon.fr> [2001-05-09 18:54+0200]
> I think there is a subtle difference in semantics, in that "None-blocks" are
> general statements that are not targeted at any specific intermediary, and are
> there either for information purposes, or for sharing data, whereas
> "Final-blocks" are specifically targeted at the final intermediary, and you'd
> hope that they'd processed and acted upon by that intermediary, although you
> have no guarantee (unless you use "mustUnderstand" (or "mustHappen")).
> 
> As a side note, I am wondering whether "mustUnderstand" is applicable to
> "None-blocks"?

The definition of the mustUnderstand attribute[1] reads:

   The XMLP/SOAP mustUnderstand global attribute can be used to indicate
   whether the processing of an XMLP/SOAP header block is mandatory or
   optional at the target XMLP/SOAP node. The target XMLP/SOAP node
   itself is defined by the XMLP/SOAP actor attribute (see section
   4.2.2).

If a block has the mustUnderstand flag on but isn't targetted to
anybody, then nobody will feel obliged to do something about it and
there is no handler directly associated to it anywhere. I would say
that the mustUnderstand attribute is irrelevant for such blocks:
whether it is there or not does not make any difference.

However, this has an impact on Gudge's "Must uderstand mustUnderstand"
(MUMU) proposal[2]. The MUMU handler should disregard
anonymous/untargetted blocks, even if they have a mustUnderstand
attribute of value equal to 1.

  1. http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/1/04/17/xmlp-soap-01.html#_Toc478383500
  2. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001May/0115.html
-- 
Hugo Haas - W3C
mailto:hugo@w3.org - http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/ - tel:+1-617-452-2092

Received on Wednesday, 9 May 2001 22:27:51 UTC