All,

We did not discuss this issue at all in Sunnyvale. We discussed whether AbstractNames should be mandatory in use of the resolution protocol of WS-Naming –specifically whether the resolution function should take a vanilla EPR or require a WS-Name (EPR with AbstractName) as a parameter. By parameter I mean either as an explicit parameter or as an implicit parameter in the header. The decision was that an AbstractName was NOT required in the resolution function. Thus the function is typed as taking (and returning) an EPR rather than a WS-Name. However, it is the inclusion of the AbstractName in the EPR that makes it a WS-Name.

The issue I originally raised was not about whether resolution took EPR’s or WS-Names – rather should OGSA mandate/encourage the use of WS-Names. I distinguish between those two because mandate is too strong; for example in RNS a path may refer to either a WS-Name or an EPR – an EPR that is just to some “plain-old” web-service. I believe that we should certainly encourage WS-Names – they give clients the ability to UNIQUELY identify an endpoint and compare EPR’s to determine if they refer to the “same” endpoint – a capability otherwise not part of WS-Addressing.  

In the case of BES I think the argument is very strong. Many different actors (players) may need to refer to a BES activity over time – loggers, “job managers”, accounting services, exception managers, workflow engines, and so on. The ability to uniquely identify an activity is crucial.

Andrew

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From: Ian Foster [mailto:foster@mcs.anl.gov]
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 2:57 PM
To: Andrew Grimshaw; ogsa-wg@ggf.org
Subject: Re: [ogsa-wg] BES query

I believe that the opinion was expressed by some at the San Diego meeting (e.g., by Steve Tuecke) that WS-Names should NOT be mandated.

It certainly defines a nice way of using EPRs that will be useful in some situations. But it surely can't be the case that we always want to mandate this particular set of extensions to EPRs. That requirement certainly doesn't jibe with how we use them in all cases, for example.

Ian.


At 09:25 AM 8/29/2005 -0400, Andrew Grimshaw wrote:

All,

In the BES working group call last week the issue of naming came up. The current DRAFT specification calls for passing WS-Names in and out of the various function calls. There was the question as to whether EPRs is all that should be specified. We thought this is an OGSA issue: mainly is OGSA endorsing the use of WS-Names where appropriate. Clearly I think we should. But this should be discussed.

Andrew

_______________________________________________________________
Ian Foster                    www.mcs.anl.gov/~foster
Math & Computer Science Div.  Dept of Computer Science
Argonne National Laboratory   The University of Chicago
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