Implicit output ports and p:declare-step

Hi all,

I have a question about manufacturing implicit output ports in compound
steps.

Section 2.3 of the spec says:

"Additionally, if a compound step has no declared outputs and the last
step in its subpipeline has an unbound primary output, then an implicit
primary output port will be added to the compound step (and consequently
the last step's primary output will be bound to it). This implicit
output port has no name. It inherits the sequence property of the port
bound to it."

Does this apply also to p:declare-step? I just found out (to my
surprise) that in our implementation, it does. The effect is that if you
run the following pipeline:

<p:declare-step>
  <p:load href="doc.xml"/>
</p:declare-step>

then our processor will manufacture an implicit primary output port for
the pipeline, and you will get the contents of doc.xml as the pipeline
result.

Is this correct, or a bug in our implementation?

Regards,
Vojtech

Received on Monday, 22 June 2009 08:51:58 UTC