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My concern is a rather general one and pertains to one of the few implementations of WS-Policy framework that currently exists http://ws.apache.org/commons/policy/index.html . The concern is that given the recursive nature of the Policy schema (Policies contain Assertions which could contain further Policies and Assertions) the tendency for an implementation of the WS-Policy framework is present the user with a set of API's which give access to Policy information in an untyped way. If you look at the Apache APIs for accessing Assertion info at http://ws.apache.org/commons/policy/apidocs/index.html you will see that these are not much different than the DOM APIs used to walk an XML document. Implementations of WS-Policy Framework should be conscious of providing users with interfaces that allows assertions to be deserialized into domain specific types so that accessing Assertion info is not a matter of having to code to a DOM like set of APIs.
This issue is now marked as resolved since it is obviously concern a particular implementation. But for the record I would like to leave the following comments. The new Neethi implementation addresses these issues and provides a better framework for policy manipulation. Its architecture is based on a delegation model where it delegates the de-serialization, serialization of any domain specific assertions to domain specific policy extensions that can de-serialize, serialize those assertions to domain specific types. Here the only requirement is that those domain specific types to implement the Assertion interface that the general policy framework will understand. This codebase is now under development and please feel free to send any feed back to commons-dev@ws.apache.org mailing list preferably with [Neethi] subject prefix. (In reply to comment #0) > My concern is a rather general one and pertains to one of the few > implementations of WS-Policy framework that currently exists > http://ws.apache.org/commons/policy/index.html . > The concern is that given the recursive nature of the Policy schema (Policies > contain Assertions which could contain further Policies and Assertions) the > tendency for an implementation of the WS-Policy framework is present the user > with a set of API's which give access to Policy information in an untyped way. > If you look at the Apache APIs for accessing Assertion info at > http://ws.apache.org/commons/policy/apidocs/index.html you will see that these > are not much different than the DOM APIs used to walk an XML document. > Implementations of WS-Policy Framework should be conscious of providing users > with interfaces that allows assertions to be deserialized into domain specific > types so that accessing Assertion info is not a matter of having to code to a > DOM like set of APIs. >
Seumas understood that this could not be addressed by the working group in terms of the specifications. He raised the issue because he understood many implementors particpated in the WG and wanted to give the implmentors a heads up on this issue.