Resilient References? (Re: [ogsa-wg] ogsa London f2f minutes uploaded)

[Frank Siebenlist]

Let me try to argue one more time about NOT including the resilient
reference spec in the ws-naming.

First of all, this resilient reference (RR) is not dependent on any
naming scheme; not on any notion of what an identity is, may be or
smells like: no name is "visible" to the consumer of the RR's EPR as all
is hidden inside of that EPR.

The interface has no input message parameter, is extremely simple and
easy to implement - the code that would deal with those RRs would be
fairly straightforward and would provide clients with that extra
stability that will allow them to connect with those resources that may
move, or may listen on other ports, or bound to a different protocol,
whatever...

In other words, it is a thing or rare beauty and an abstraction you
don't find often.

Now the cons of adding this to the ws-naming are:

* all naming discussions that I've been part of get bugged down in
religious discussions about what names are, what identities are, whether
we need them, what their formats are or should be or should not be,
whether we should use URIs or should not, how many naming levels we
need, what interfaces we will have for resolutions and what parameters
will be passed - none of this is trivial and it will take time for all
to agree ... and it is very possible that not all will agree...

* ...and the most important thing is that there will also be the notion
of "ws-naming" compliance that is needed for interoperability, which
brings up another complicated discussion of what subset of ws-naming
needs a MUST or a SHOULD...

Note that the RRs are very useful stand-alone, without any of the
additional naming features, bells and whistles.

So in order to keep the RRs save and allow for adoption of RRs, we would
then need a ws-naming "level-0 compliance" that would allow implementers
to adopt the RRs without the rest of ws-naming. Higher level compliances
would then deal with the actual use of names, naming conventions and such.

That last observation could also lead to a decision to split the charter
of ws-naming in two. The first part would deal with RRs only and could
most probably be decided quickly with a separate, very short spec, while
the second part of the charter would deal with the more complicated
matter that involves the visible names. I can imagine that MS would be
very much in favor of such a pragmatic approach.

-Frank.

PS. Please note that I am very interested in ws-naming and truly hope
that useful things will come out of it, but for the reasons stated I
would like to save this little RR-gem from unnecessary delays and
adoption hurdles such that it could actually be deployed.


Frank Siebenlist wrote:

>I've been reading the minutes and was wondering if anything was decided
>about those Resilient References.
>
>Personally I hope it is still in the BP as it seems
>independent/stays-clear of any of the naming issues.
>
>In other words, this seems low hanging fruit and moving it in the naming
>profile could delay adoption (unless anyone can tell me that all the
>naming will be resolved next week ;-) ).
>
>-Frank.
>
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>Hiro Kishimoto wrote:
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>>Hi all,
>>
>>Mark and Andreas upload F2F minutes to GridForge.
>>Please have a look and approve them tomorrow.
>>
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>>>They are now online:
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>>https://forge.gridforum.org/projects/ogsa-wg/document/f2f-minutes-20050524/en/1
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>>https://forge.gridforum.org/projects/ogsa-wg/document/f2f-minutes-20050523/en/1
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>>Thanks Mark and Andreas for your excellent minutes!
>>----
>>Hiro Kishimoto
>>
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-- 
Frank Siebenlist               franks at mcs.anl.gov
The Globus Alliance - Argonne National Laboratory