WSA Telcon -- 1 May 2003

Present: Abbie Barbir, Assaf_Arkin, Chris_Ferris, Colleen Evans, Dave Orchard, Daniel Austin, Dave Hollander, Doug Bunting, Frank McCabe, Geoff_Arnold, Gerald Edgar, Hao He, Hugo Haas, Katia_Sycara, Mark Jones, Martin Chapman, Mike Champion, Mike Mahan, Roger Cutler, Suresh Damodaran, Ugo Corda

Regrets:

Chair: Mike Champion

Scribe: Geoff Arnold

<geoff_a> Geoff scribes
... Minutes approval.....
... NO objections... minutes are approved for publication
... F2F planning issues:
... No obvious reasons to go ahead with Toronto July F2F due to SARS - no objections heard, we'll proceed
... Oops - *not* to go ahead.
... Is September 22 acceptable for West Coast? We'll work with Jonathan to host at SAP
... Do we need help in getting consensus out of horrible things?
... We'll go for the first half of the week for SAP
... No venue yet for a venue for November
... Offer from Thompson in Australia, possible coordination with Japanese meetings, but Australia looks like a non-starter for many
... Soliciting offers for alternative hosting at that time
... Customary to spread these things around, but those customs arose in DotCom days....
... How about Hawaii? It's Asia-Pacific.... ;-)
... A few people can do Australia, but....
... Resolved: look into travel budgets, consider hosting offers
... Frank volunteers Fujitsu in Santa Clara for November
... Next issue: Core WG approached by Schema & XML Core about defining web service friendly XML subsets/schema
... This will be discussed in XMLP, may involve WSA later
... Action items:

<geoff_a> Reconcile terminology with evolving WSDL
... Correction: discussion of subsetting XML Schema and XML will be held in thier respective WGs, not XMLP
... Action item: schedule overlapping sessions on WSDL terminology and XML subsetting issues
... Action on protocol independence is continued
... Action on sync/async is closed
... Action on all to review security text... pendng?
... Action on MEP language continued
... Action on choreography is continued
... Action on integrating Heather's text closed
... Action on stack diagram text is done; we'll try to review later

<dougb> ACTION: Mike Champion to schedule overlapping sessions on WSDL terminology and XML subsetting issues

<geoff_a> Action on cross-referencing is closed....
... ACTION: Martin to UMLize spaghetti

<mchampion> mike temporarily scribes
... Geoff sent text on synch vs asynch issue, Chris endorses it.
... Treats them as adjectives applied to MEPs. Proposed definiitons of MEP for glossary.
... "synch" and "asynch" are fuzzy and informal terms, no way to get rigorous definitions.
... Geoff's text reflects that.
... http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-arch/2003May/0014.html
... There have been several tweaks and +1s.
... Roger: this is not fuzzy and informal; the problem is not lack of precision but different definitions in different domains.
... Several people agree.
... Geoff: Our definition applies to the domain of MEP's
... Roger: put verbiage in recognizing the "domain" issue.
... Geoff: agrees to this as friendly amendment, can add a couple of sentences.
... DaveH: One purpose of this document is to prevent meaningless debate!
... ACTION: Geoff will tweak text of asynch and synch MEPs along the lines of this discussion and resubmit
... ACTION: Glossary editor will incorporate Geoff's MEP definitions

<geoff_a> The trout is filleted....
... Draft language for the WSA Glossary on Message Exchange
... Patterns, Synchronous MEPs, and Asynchronous MEPs.
... In general, my objective is to beef up the MEP concept, to tie
... "synchronous" and "asynchronous" to MEPs, and to note that
... they are really just informally descriptive terms. I've incorporated
... comments from Chris Ferris and others, but any problems are due to me.
... ----------------------------------------------------------------------
... Asynchronous Message Exchange Pattern
... See discussion under Message Exchange Pattern
... -------------------------------------------------
... Synchronous Message Exchange Pattern
... See discussion under Message Exchange Pattern
... -------------------------------------------------
... Message Exchange Pattern (MEP)
... [Derived from http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-soap12-part1-20020626/#soapmep ]
... A MEP is a template that establishes a pattern for the exchange of messages
... between SOAP nodes. A MEP MAY be supported by one or more underlying protocol
... binding instances.
... This section is a logical description of the operation of a MEP. It is not
... intended to describe a real implementation or to imply that a real
... implementation needs to be similarly structured.
... In general the definition of a message exchange pattern:
... * Is named by a URI.
... * Describes the life cycle of a message exchange conforming to the pattern.
... * Describes the temporal/causal relationships of multiple messages exchanged
... in conformance with the pattern.
... * Describes the normal and abnormal termination of a message exchange
... conforming to the pattern.
... Underlying protocol binding specifications can declare their support for one or
... more named MEPs.
... [New language]
... In principle, MEPs may be arbitrarily complex, and may include various
... temporal relationships between messages. In practice, there is a small number
... of patterns for which the temporal relationships are well (if informally)
... understood. MEPs which describe closely coupled, or lock-step interactions
... are frequently referred to as "synchronous". Examples include RPC-style
... request-response interactions and some kinds of transactional exchanges.
... Other MEPs allow messages to be sent without precise sequencing, and these
... are described as "asynchronous". Examples include a flow of sensor event
... messages which need not be individually acknowledged, and an auction in which
... parties may submit bids at any time during the auction.
... The terms "synchronous" and "asynchronous" are descriptive, and do
... not correspond precisely to properties of MEPs. Occasionally the
... terms may be associated with particular message transport features,
... such as the re-use of a session. While specific implementations may
... support such notions, a dependency on such a feature would violate
... protocol independence, and therefore be problematic.
... Many (most?) web services do not use published MEP's, but instead rely
... on more or less informal patterns and techniques. In such cases, the
... terms "synchronous" and "asynchronous" may be used to indicate the
... type of informal pattern being used. They may also indicate whether
... or not coordination and synchronization techniques such as correlation
... data and particular transport bindings are to be used.
... Draft language for the WSA Glossary on Message Exchange
... Patterns, Synchronous MEPs, and Asynchronous MEPs.
... In general, my objective is to beef up the MEP concept, to tie
... "synchronous" and "asynchronous" to MEPs, and to note that
... they are really just informally descriptive terms. I've incorporated
... comments from Chris Ferris and others, but any problems are due to me.
... ----------------------------------------------------------------------

<geoff_a> Asynchronous Message Exchange Pattern
... See discussion under Message Exchange Pattern
... -------------------------------------------------
... Synchronous Message Exchange Pattern
... See discussion under Message Exchange Pattern
... -------------------------------------------------
... Message Exchange Pattern (MEP)
... [Derived from http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-soap12-part1-20020626/#soapmep ]
... A MEP is a template that establishes a pattern for the exchange of messages
... between SOAP nodes. A MEP MAY be supported by one or more underlying protocol
... binding instances.
... This section is a logical description of the operation of a MEP. It is not
... intended to describe a real implementation or to imply that a real
... implementation needs to be similarly structured.
... In general the definition of a message exchange pattern:
... * Is named by a URI.
... * Describes the life cycle of a message exchange conforming to the pattern.
... * Describes the temporal/causal relationships of multiple messages exchanged
... in conformance with the pattern.
... * Describes the normal and abnormal termination of a message exchange
... conforming to the pattern.
... Underlying protocol binding specifications can declare their support for one or
... more named MEPs.
... [New language]
... In principle, MEPs may be arbitrarily complex, and may include various
... temporal relationships between messages. In practice, there is a small number
... of patterns for which the temporal relationships are well (if informally)
... understood. MEPs which describe closely coupled, or lock-step interactions
... are frequently referred to as "synchronous". Examples include RPC-style
... request-response interactions and some kinds of transactional exchanges.
... Other MEPs allow messages to be sent without precise sequencing, and these
... are described as "asynchronous". Examples include a flow of sensor event
... messages which need not be individually acknowledged, and an auction in which
... parties may submit bids at any time during the auction.

<mchampion> ACTION: Geoff will add language in response to Ugo's point cautioning not to use this informal definition in formal specs

<geoff_a> The terms "synchronous" and "asynchronous" are descriptive, and do
... not correspond precisely to properties of MEPs. Occasionally the
... terms may be associated with particular message transport features,
... such as the re-use of a session. While specific implementations may
... support such notions, a dependency on such a feature would violate
... protocol independence, and therefore be problematic.
... Many (most?) web services do not use published MEP's, but instead rely
... on more or less informal patterns and techniques. In such cases, the
... terms "synchronous" and "asynchronous" may be used to indicate the
... type of informal pattern being used. They may also indicate whether
... or not coordination and synchronization techniques such as correlation
... data and particular transport bindings are to be used.

<mchampion> Suesh: where did MEP defintion come from?
... Geoff: SOAP
... Suresh: relationship between MEPs and Choroegraphy still a bit unclear
... Geoff: shoule we provide taxonomy of known MEPs?
... Several say no, Suresh says yes.

<mchampion> ACTION: Take this discussion of MEP taxonomy to mailing list, Suresh will respond on email thread

<arkin> +1 to text provided by geoff
... also would like to see the terms sync/asynch being used to indicate the type of pattern being used independently of how the protocols take care of business

<mchampion> ACTION: Glossary and document editors need to make sure that the synch/asynch text is in synch

<arkin> this allows us to broadly say how the interaction occurs with relation to active completion, transaction propagation and overall coordination in a larger framework

<geoff_a> We *do* need to show a heartbeat.
... We need drafts out by the AC mtg next week
... Drafts wil be frozen and submitted to W3C webmaster next week
... Over the next week we need to improve wording, flag any problematic areas with editors' notes, in extreme cases we would have to remove.
... We also have text that that not yet been poured into the template, where we may prefer to refereence an external document
... The docs need to be reviewable "on the plane" - and the editors need feedback within a week.
... Editors have identified some gaps. MTF folks need to review new "Core Concepts"

<mchampion> ACTION: Group should review frank's latest draft in next few days and record "showstoper" problems
... ACTION: MTF people should look carefully at Frank's translation of their text into the concepts relatioships framework

<geoff_a> The Reliability section has changed substantially; it incorporates msg reliability email

<mchampion> ACTION: People should look carefully at message reliability section

<geoff_a> We've only just seen Privacy text. Do we want to try to work it in over the next couple of days.

<mchampion> ACTION: The security and privacy sections need careful attention by group and editors

<geoff_a> Security needs to be addressed (via pointer?)
... David Booth is presently otherwise engaged...... ;-)
... Next telcon will guide what goes into the heartbeat draft
... Frank encourages links
... ...for new text
... But this makes it hard to read on the plane. So write proposals in spec-ese whenever possible
... Stick text in the body in a "note" format when this makes sense....
... Deadline for submission for publication is May 13.
... Glossary, usage, scenarios and document make up the publication
... Over the next week, need to identify "squirly"(?) sections and decide how to handle - fix, withdraw, flag, etc.
... Goal is heartbeat before F2F, then establish substantial consensus by end of F2F.
... [Hugo describes travel agent additions to Usage Scenarios - check the latest editors' draft.]
... Discussion: Mike Champion's draft text to explain the stack diagram

<Daniel> Daniel Austin needs to leave the meeting now...see you all next week!

<geoff_a> Frank will check it in
... [A general round of appreciation to Frank]
... Trout pond: WSD is busy over ports, services, and the definition of a web service. Anything we need to do before heartbeat?
... Anyone who cares about e.g. equivalence of endpoints should track this. Very important
... Keep the discussion over on their list
... Subscribe or read the archive
... [Dave summarizes "equivalence of endpoints" issue]

<geoff_a> Read, read, read, comment, comment, comment!!!!!!!
... [Discussion of mechanics of publication]

WSA Telcon
1 May 2003

Attendees

Contents

Summary of Action Items

WSA Telcon 1 May 2003

Attendees

Contents

Summary of Action Items

WSA Telcon
1 May 2003