RE: Issue #170: "Referencing Data missing from the message"

I would strongly support "MAY fail" rather than "MUST fail" which I
believe is consistent with my previous mail [1]. The reason is both as
Noah points out it is impossible to verify but also because it is wrong
to enforce a requirement for the receiving party to fail unless we have
a correctness problem in our specification. This is not the case here as
the semantics of the link is defined by the application and not by us.
We should not enforce rules on semantics over which we have no control.

>How can an external observer distinguish these two cases?  
>Either can occur due to conditions known only within the 
>processing node.  In one case, I don't dereference because I 
>was lazy and didn't try.  In the other case, I try, but 
>there's a glitch in my network layer and I can't make the 
>connection.  You worry that Jacek would REQUIRE that I fault 
>only in the latter case, but how could you tell?  I might always
>claim:  "gee, actually, I never even tried to get at it."
>
>I think I'm still happiest with MAY fault.

Henrik

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2001Dec/0017.html

Received on Thursday, 3 January 2002 04:22:59 UTC