[ogsa-wg] RE: GRIDtoday Edition: Tony Hey: 'Challenging Times for GGF & Standards'

[Ian Foster]

>First, please allow me to say something about my claim that the OGSA WG
>mandates WSRF, a claim which you have questioned. I may have
>misunderstood the group's intentions, in which case I apologise, but
>discussions with various people and minutes from meetings directed me
>and many others towards making that conclusion (this was raised by
>several people at the UK-OGSA meeting). Also, the current draft of the
>OGSA Basic Profile, to which I assume all high-level services will have
>to adhere, is described in terms of WSRF.

Savas:

What I meant about "mandating" (which upon reflection I suspect is what you 
meant too):

A profile typically says simply that IF you use something, THEN this is how 
you must use it. It doesn't say you MUST use it. Thus, the OGSA Base 
Profile doesn't say anything about whether WSRF should be used or not, it 
just says how you should use it if you do.

Where, then, is WSRF "mandated"? At present, nowhere. However, moving 
forward, it would seem likely that when OGSA WG considers say a management 
specification for inclusion in some future "management profile", it will 
look kindly on one that uses WSRF conventions to access remote state, 
rather than making up its own custom ones, because that is viewed as 
enhancing interoperability. It would then also want to see that WSRF is 
used in a way that adheres to the OGSA Base Profile.

On the other hand, when considering specifications that have nothing to do 
with state (e.g., naming), there would be no reason for WSRF to come into 
the picture. The draft OGSA Naming Profile that Andrew Grimshaw is 
developing does not use any WSRF mechanisms. It *could*, but this hasn't 
been seen as particularly useful, so it doesn't.

And (the point I was harping on, probably too much), there is nothing to 
say that you must use WSRF conventions when developing your own services.

So, I guess WSRF is "mandated" in some places, and not in others.

Steve Loughran wrote more eloquently on some related topics in an earlier 
post to ogsa-wg.

Ian.

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