[MTOM issue] OptimizationCandidates should be OptimizedElements

Hi all,

I voiced this opinion before in a telcon, I believe, but I'll better try
to put it down in writing:

I think that in the abstract, the property that our Abstract
Transmission Optimization Feature would use better would be a set of
(pointers to) the elements that are *to be optimized*, not just a set of
candidates.

The reason for making the property a set of candidates is seemingly that
the binding may actually decide it knows better and not optimize
transmission of certain elements. What I'm saying is that in an
implementation, any piece of code can contribute to the value of the
property, including the code implementing the binding.

If we have OptimizedElements property instead of OptimizationCandidates,
the property can be naturally transmitted to the other node and it may
(and I think it should) be the initial value of the property on a
relaying node. This would make it clear that we think that unless the
relaying node explicitly changes the value, the same elements will be
optimized after relay.

If we keep OptimizationCandidates with thee current semantics, we are
implicitly providing (at least on the sending node) another piece of
information - the set of elements that were considered optimization
candidates but weren't actually optimized. What do we need this
information for? Some people actually seem to think this piece of
information might be transferred to the receiving node, which introduces
more implementation complexity. Why?

In summary, I propose we rename the property to OptimizedElement (or
alike) and change the current semantics to say that it contains
(pointers to) the elements that will be optimized in transmission by an
MTOM-aware binding.

Hope it makes sense,

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Senior Architect
                   Systinet Corporation
                   http://www.systinet.com/

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2003 14:43:19 UTC