[GRAAP-WG] Problems of WS-Agreement Specification

[Tianchao Li]

Karl Czajkowski wrote:

>On Sep 27, Tianchao Li modulated:
>...
>  
>
>>2. Agreement Template Property of Agreement Factory and Pending
>>Agreement Factory Service
>>
>>The agreement factory has a property of agreement template. However,
>>the agreement template retrieval should be regarded as a part of the
>>resource negotiation process to accommodate the different modes of
>>negotiation.  For example, the  service provider might post their
>>agreement template in a category (index) service as advertisement.
>>
>>This might also cause security problems. For example, the service
>>provider might want to provide different templates for different
>>clients, or restrict certain clients to access template at all.
>>
>>recommendation:
>>
>>do not define the agreement template property in agreement factory and
>>pending agreement factory service.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I disagree with this recommendation. I think there are several less
>invasive alternatives:
>
>   1. an implementation is free to apply authorization checks to 
>      control what templates are viewed by what clients during RP query
>
>   2. an implementation is free to only list a limited set of "public" 
>      templates in the PR, and provide an extended retrievel mechanism
>      to get the "private" templates, as part of an extended negotiation
>      system, etc.
>
>   3. the process by which templates might find their way into indexes
>      or registries is not defined nor restricted by the spec.
>  
>
Yes. These alternatives looks better to me.

>
>  
>
>>We have different choices:
>>
>>(1) merge agreement and agreement status port type
>>
>>(2) modify AgreementFactory and PendingAgreementFactory portType
>>
>>(3) specify the relation more explicitly in the documentation
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I am surprised by this. I think the specification should be stating
>(3) that the result of our factory is a resource which implements
>both. The reason for separating them is to allow someone else to reuse
>just portions of the protocol, I think.  (But perhaps I have missed
>some other discussion on this...)
>  
>
Thanks. I've found the description to the AgreementState porttype:
"The purpose of this port type is to define a resource document type for 
monitoring
the state of the agreement. This port type is not meant to be used as is 
but instead,
its resource properties MAY be composed into a domain-specific Agreement 
port
type".

>karl
>
>  
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