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Section 5.6 [1] needs to be refactored and rewritten. 1. There is no such thing as an "optional assertion". By that, I mean that all assertions, because they may be included or omitted from a policy and/or an alternative(s) in that policy are, by definition optional in a sense. Rather than characterize this as considering whether an assertion is or is not optional, I think that the guidelines should include a best practice that recommends that assertion authors enable compact authoring style by allowing the wsp:Optional attribute to be added to the assertion. Proposal: replace section 5.6.1 with: The Policy Framework provides two modes of authoring policy expressions: compact and normal form. One of the mechanisms that the Policy Framework provides to policy authors for purposes of writing compact policy expressions is the wsp:Optional attribute. Assertion Authors should allow for the use of the wsp:Optional attribute in the XML outline and/or schema definition of an assertion. Best Practice 16: Assertion Authors should allow use of wsp:Optional attribute An assertion's XML outline and/or schema definition should allow the use of the wsp:Optional attribute so as to enable policy authors to compose compact policy expressions. 2. section 5.6.2 makes an important point, but this point is buried in some (I believe) incorrect analysis (see above) related to "optional assertions". The point that needs to be preserved in the guidelines is that assertion authors need to consider that because the framework does not provide for a means of signaling which alternative was selected, that they may resort to engaging a behavior (or not) in the context of a message exchange pattern. The examples cited, rm and mtom, are good ones, because the provide the reader with working examples. However, I don't think that the point being made belongs in a section related to wsp:Optional. Proposal: remove section 5.6.2 I will follow this up with an attempt to capture the important point in the section related to policy attachment points. [1] http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/%7Echeckout%7E/2006/ws/policy/ws-policy-guidelines.html?content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8#optional-policy-assertion
RESOLUTION: issue 4861 closed with proposal from Chris in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-policy/2007Jul/0038.html replacing the last paragraph with the following: If the assertion author had not provided for the wsp:Optional attribute to be included on the assertion, then policy expression authors would be forced to express the optionality of a behavior as two explicit policy alternatives, one with and one without that assertion when including assertions of that type in their policies. and replacing the foo:Bar assertion with a real assertion such as wsrmp:RMAssertion See http://www.w3.org/2007/07/18-ws-policy-irc#T15-00-11