LC Issue 217

On last nights WG telcon I took an action to figure out the issues 
surrounding LC Issue 217[1]:

"(Section 2.1 SOAP Nodes)
A SOAP node MUST be identified by a URI.

Wonder if we should say "unambigously identified". eg.  http://.../next
does not unambiguously identify a SOAP node (some context for 
interpretation
is required in addition to a URI in order to identify a SOAP node 
from this
URI).
Can the  URI be relative? I think not! Should we say "absolute URI"?

Good points. Another question: why 'MUST' a SOAP node be identified by a
URI ? Roles are identified by a URI, but why must a SOAP node be ?
Should this be a 'MAY' ?"

To summarise previous discussion (on the WG private list) of this issue:

Stuart Williams: "I think the emphasis might be such tha *if* a
SOAP node is to be identified then it MUST be (unambiguously?) 
identifed by
a URI. Relaxing to just MAY would admit other forms of identification"

Noah Mendelsohn: "I believe this was introduced to provide a value 
for the "Node" element  that's used in reporting faults.  I don't 
just want to know that the fault occurred at some node playing the 
role of a cache manager, I'd prefer to know which one.  I suggest 
we keep it."

Marc Hadley (in response to Noah): "But the Node EII is optional in 
faults so the MUST above seems a little OTT..."

Stuart Williams: "That a node is identified in a particular 
circumstance (in a fault message) is optional (MAY).

That a node is in fact being identified in that circumstance 
identification
by URI (or URI reference - I hope not) is mandatory (MUST).

ie. the act identification is optional, but the means of 
identification is
not.

At least that's what I think we are trying to say, an 'identified' 
is the
problem word here because the it is not clear whether it refers to 
the acy
or the means of identification."

Proposal
========

I think Stuart pretty much nailed it above. Identifying a node is 
optional, but when a node *is* identified a URI is used.

Suggest we change "A SOAP node MUST be identified by a URI." to "A 
SOAP node is identified by an unambiguous URI".

Regards,
Marc.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2000/xp/Group/xmlp-lc-issues.html#x217
--
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley@sun.com>
XML Technology Center, Sun Microsystems.

Received on Thursday, 11 July 2002 10:15:51 UTC