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In the current specifications, the only way of looking up the policy of a resource is to do it at 'runtime' via MEX. An example: I create a resource using the resource factory. But until I have a resource there is no policy for that resource. Now, the 80/20 (or maybe even 95/5) case is that ALL the resources that are created by a singled ResourceFactory will have a consistent policy. In that case, it would be *very* valuable to be able to find out this policy ahead of time (design time). Take a simple example: I might be writing a client to a printer. The resource factory allows me to create print jobs and then deal with those. I don't want to have to create a print job just to understand the policy associated with that print job. There isn't a fully fledged proposal at this point, but the main thrust of this is to add a policy parameter to the ResourceFactory policy. This parameter is optional. If it doesn't exist then you still have to go to an individual resource to find its policy. But if the parameter <ResourcePolicy> exists, then this is a guarantee from the ResourceFactory that all resources created MUST have that policy. The contents of the parameter are a valid WS-Policy applicable to a resource endpoint.
proposal at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-ws-resource-access/2010Jan/0180.html