Karl Czajkowski wrote:
Donal: did we lose the xsd:any child of the top-level JSDL document element?
Not from rev 18 of the spec, and having xsd:any##other everywhere (except in RangeValueType of course) is certainly our intention.
If we decided to have a WS-GRAM dialect of JSDL where we just transliterated some of the biggies like our staging clause, I would expect there to be, for example, a single (or three) "RFT element" at the top-level as a peer to the POSIX application and resource sections and zero jsdl:FileStaging elements.
Sounds fine to me actually. I'm personally intending to use JSDL in an overall workflow document where the datastaging bits are peers to the JSDL document-lets. Obviously this is a scope way outside the classic scope of JSDL, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. :^) [much very sensible stuff elided]
I certainly thought this would be possible. Note, this is a technical question in my mind. I realize there is an entirely orthogonal concern about when one "should" use the extension mechanisms in a particular way... in these hypothetical discussions we all bring a lot of assumptions about how other standards will appear. For example, I assume BES will not include staging nor define how BES services respond to FileStaging elements. A BES client expecting interop would not use the JSDL staging nor any other non-BES extensions. Therefore, I do not see a BES + WS-GRAM staging extension as described above to really be more or less interoperable than one that tries to use the JSDL staging syntax. It would be specifically for transitional/legacy use by applications not content to use the interop profile(s).
I suspect that JSDL 1.0's very simple data staging stuff is not going to be anything like the end of the story. The problem is that I think doing anything better at the common standard level (as opposed to in some system-specific extension) will require us to take on the tangle of workflow. Anyone up for rechartering? :^) To cut a long story short, do something sensible with data staging. Getting the standard to a point where it won't be necessary in most situations will require enough effort that an interim solution is a recommended strategy. Well, in my opinion anyway. Donal.