[jsdl-wg] JSDL compliance levels

[Michel Drescher]

Folks,

I got the assignment to the following two action points from last 
week's phone conference:

>>   8) JSDL compliance levels
>>      How much of jsdl a system must support, not just process.
>>      Probably a topic for later.
>>
>>   9) The statement "If not supported then the consuming system MUST
>>      reject the document." needs a bit more explanation or re-write

To solve these action points, I refer to the specification document 
(v0.8.5-02) ch 2 "Notational conventions".

I propose to replace the chapter's last three paragraphs (the text 
after table 1) with the following paragraphs:

     "The term JSDL documentrefers to a XML document that has
      been created following this specification. It is a schema
      instance document derived from the normative schema
      definition inAppendix 2:Normative Schema.

      The terms JSDL element and JSDL attribute indicate that the
      corresponding language construct is represented as an XML
      element and XML attribute in a JSDL document.

      The key word presentrefers to a construct being present in
      a JSDL document.

      The key word support refers to a consuming system being able
      to apply the following functions to a JSDL element or JSDL
      attribute:
      · Parse the JSDL element or JSDL attribute into a DOM tree
      · Validate the parsed DOM tree against the appropriate
        schema(s)
      · Interpret the JSDL element or attribute and assign the
        semantics according to this specification.

      The JSDL specification does not require the consuming system
      to actually implement the semantics of JSDL elements and
      attributes, so that the described job is executed on a
      computing system.

      A consuming system MUST support all normative JSDL elements
      and JSDL attributes. If a consuming system implements JSDL,
      it MUST implement all defined JSDL elements and attributes.

      This allows not only systems that execute jobs but also
      systems that provide higher level services, for example
      job broker, super scheduling systems (that possibly
      change JSDL documents before they get submitted to lower
      level job execution systems), etc."

Note: The last paragraph possibly fits better in a JSDL primer document.

This way any consuming system that deals with JSDL must support the 
defined JSDL elements and attributes, but it does not need to "ground" 
or "incarnate" or even execute a JSDL job. But if it implements JSDDL, 
then all JSDL elements and attributes must be implemented. So this 
basically eliminates any JSDL compliance levels. As we already reduced 
JSDL to the lowest common denominator, there is no need of compliance 
levels at all - at least for the moment.
The consequence would be that we can delete all these "If not supported 
then ... " sentences.

Cheers,
Michel