[Bug 6191] New: ambiguity in rule binding semantics

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6191

           Summary: ambiguity in rule binding semantics
           Product: SML
           Version: LC
          Platform: PC
        OS/Version: Windows XP
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: Interchange Format
        AssignedTo: cmsmcq@w3.org
        ReportedBy: johnarwe@us.ibm.com
         QAContact: public-sml@w3.org


One of the COSMOS JUnits that fails,
http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/org.eclipse.cosmos/tests/resource-modeling/org.eclipse.cosmos.rm.validation.tests/src/test-resources/others/rulesWithMultiplePattern.xml?root=Technology_Project&view=markup
, appears to have fallen into a hole in the current SML spec.

The test case defines a single rule binding 
   <ruleBinding>
        <documentAlias>/Units/DatabaseServer</documentAlias>
        <ruleAlias>DatabaseServerRules</ruleAlias>
    </ruleBinding>
and an instances/document member with an alias of 
      <docinfo>
        <aliases>
          <alias>http://interop.serviceml.org/Units/DatabaseServer</alias>
        </aliases>
      </docinfo>
and a model base URI of
    <baseURI>
                http://interop.serviceml.org
    </baseURI>

The test case fails because it expects to find one rule document bound to the
instance document whose alias is given above, and the code says zero are bound.

If one assumes that each <documentAlias> contains a URI reference (sic), then
the test case's assumption about expected results would be consistent.

If on the other hand one assumes that SML's use of the term "URI prefix" in
5.4.2 was intended to communicate that each <documentAlias> contains an
"absolute URI" prefix, then its value should not be transformed to absolute.

The same issue exists for <ruleAlias>

I believe the relevant sections are:
5.3.1 http://www.w3.org/TR/sml-if/#URI_equality
5.3.4 http://www.w3.org/TR/sml-if/#URI_Processing
5.4.1 http://www.w3.org/TR/sml-if/#URI_prefix_matching 
5.4.2 http://www.w3.org/TR/sml-if/#Rule_Bindings_Definition

If nothing else, this test case makes it clear that we need to clarify how
these URIs (or URI references, if those are allowed) are treated in the spec. 
We spent quite a bit of time scrutinizing document aliases, but relatively
little on these.

Note that 5.3.4 does not list <ruleAlias> or <documentAlias> contents as "URIs
subject to SML-IF URI processing", the usual code word for "it's an alias", one
of the implication of which -is- that relative references are allowed.  If the
intent is that relative references are allowed in this context, we likely need
to amend the rules on when a base URI is required in SML-IF as well.


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Received on Thursday, 30 October 2008 00:45:09 UTC