Strong, Paul wrote:
Within the RM-WG we have split attributes into configuration attributes and state attributes. Configuration attributes to some degree define behavior, defining or constraining the set of allowed states, as well as the possible values of state attributes and allowed transitions between states. Clearly configuration attributes are “interesting”, and thus according to the definition below they would be considered part of the state. I’m not sure that this is the case.
An argument that I made during the call (and which it might have been nice to have delved into in more detail if we'd had a few days instead of 15 minutes!) is that an altered configuration creates a different resource/stateful entity[*], but an altered state is something that is expected during the normal working lifetime of a resource and does not change the fundamental nature of that resource. That is, a change of config is qualitatively different to a change of state, even if both are (represented as) attributes. In general, there are loads of definitions of state (I've got a background which leads me to regard it as really a partial function whose domain is the cartesian product of time and names for "stateful" things) but they're just different ways of looking at the same thing. The good aspects of the current definition are that it is observable and changes in it are events, things which are not implicit in the standard CS definitions of the term and yet are very useful for grids. Donal. [* As you can tell, I've lost track of what kind of thing contains such attributes. I know *I* think of them as resources, but that doesn't make me right. :-) ]