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Bug 3721 - New Attribute keyword to identify 'local' policies
Summary: New Attribute keyword to identify 'local' policies
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: WS-Policy
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Framework (show other bugs)
Version: FPWD
Hardware: All All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: William Henry
QA Contact: Web Services Policy WG QA List
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-09-13 17:40 UTC by William Henry
Modified: 2006-11-09 14:29 UTC (History)
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Description William Henry 2006-09-13 17:40:57 UTC
Title: New Attribute keyword to identify 'local' policies

Justificaiton:
As WS-Policy becomes more popular in use, policies not related to consumer/provider interaction are being defined by implementors. e.g. a provider processes use of caching data, or a consumers private identity management information. Though such policies should not be used in WSDL contract it is likely that such polices could make themselves visible where they are not to be used through attachment mechanisms (external XML files or UDDI etc.)

I understand that his issue may have been raised before and the argument was that it was out of scope and that domains are responsible for defining such attributes. (e.g. WSDM) However this puts a burden on consumers to understand certain domain specifications or certain proprietary implementer policies. A service might be deemed unusable just because consumer doesn't understand some policy that is actually just a configuration policy for a local server.

A more consistent and also efficient mechanism is required. Having a keyword e.g.  wsp:local (or wsp:providerOnly, wsp:consumerOnly) allows consumers to ignore such policies. 

What an implementor does inside that policy then is up to them and is "invisible" to the consumer of the the policy as it will be ignored.

So though it seems like it is not clear that we should do this in the charter it does allow a mechanism to make consumer/provider policies clearer - i.e. anything tagged with this attribute (e.g. wsp:local) can be ignored for consumer/provider interaction. Pushing it out to the domain specifications can leave a lot of ambiguity and therefore could effect our charter.

Proposal Description
Introduce the wsp:local attribute and explain that policies with this attribute do not effect consumer/provider interaction and should be ignored from calculating assertions for such interaction.
Comment 1 William Henry 2006-09-13 17:46:41 UTC
Usage of the attribute would be to assign true if the policy is local.

wsp:local='true'

Like wsp:optional, omission would mean the default of 'false'
Comment 2 William Henry 2006-09-13 18:08:10 UTC
Target: WS-Policy Framework 1.5
Comment 3 Paul Cotton 2006-11-09 14:29:27 UTC
Resolved by Treasure Island amended proposal at the Nov F2F in the thread:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2006Nov/0072.html

/paulc