On Jul 13, Subramaniam, Ravi modulated:
Hi David,
I see what you are saying and I did consider that. The glossary term implied a "many to one" or "one to one" situation - one provider. What I was suggesting is a "one to many" situation which is very likely. So the situation where you have multiple providers accepting to an agreement (which at a higher level may be a single contract between domains) is still a "one to many" situation that the glossary term should cover. Right?
Ravi
If you want to be general, I think the agreement should be BETWEEN two parties (i.e. the legally bound parties) but REGARDING multiple services, some of which may be provided (directly or indirectly) by either party. I also think the important thing is to realize that the services must be described clearly in terms of domain-specific operating constraints, including the roles/responsibilities of the agreeing parties. It is folly to try to state these roles in general about the agreement parties in isolation from the service-specific models. The idea of who is the "producer" and the "consumer" is really domain-specific and there are plenty of cases where you have to stand on your head and count backwards to even make such a distinction. (For example, with peering arrangements: you would have to factor out the peering "service" into separate parts where you look at each part as a directed provider/consumer aspect of the overall service.) karl -- Karl Czajkowski karlcz@univa.com