RE: Comments on the "drop response-only" Part 2 draft

Thanks for the review.  I think that the small amount of comments shows
how fairly straightforward it is to refactor the spec and how quickly it
could proceed through the w3c process.  I can certainly live with
keeping the response-only mep if that would gain people's support.  I
again assert that the state machines have not served our community and
have hindered the specification and deployment of new MEPs and bindings.


The WG has now spent a fair amount of time examining the refactored MEP
approach, and we've had some detailed comments.  It seems to me that we
have largely and well covered the ground.  I thank the WG for the time
and diligence in examining the options available.  

I think that it's now time to call the question on which approach to
follow.  We have sufficient information afore us to make a decision and
proceed.  I'd like to query the WG members to find out who supports the
state machineless MEP approach for our direction on the
request-optional-response problem, vs who supports the state machinefull
(status quo) MEP approach.

Cheers,
Dave  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On
> Behalf Of [email protected]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 7:10 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Comments on the "drop response-only" Part 2 draft
> 
> First, thanks again to Pete for providing the diff markup [1]  on
Dave's
> draft.  My earlier note pointed out that the diffs don't catch
everything
> of significance, but they are very helpful!
> 
> Last week I took an action to provide detailed comments on Dave's
draft. A
> marked up copy is attached.  I started with Pete's diff and added my
own
> comments as additions.  The changes I made were:
> 
> * My comments have a yellow background  and all contain the flag
> ***NOAH*** to make them easy to find.
> 
> * So I could use yellow for my comments, I change the diff markup to
use
> an acqua color for additions.  It should be self evident when you look
at
> it.
> 
> Sorry I didn't get this done earlier, but I hope it will still be
useful
> on the call.  This exercise has reconfirmed my personal position on
what
> we should and shouldn't do.
> 
> * Because of its impact on the spec, because I believe the whole point
of
> MEPs is to allow applications to identify the differences and the
> commonalities between what different bindings provide, and because I
> continue to believe after this week's discussion that one way and
req/resp
> are deeply and appropriately different, I am strongly opposed to
merging
> request/response with response only.  Keep the two MEPs.
> 
> * In other respects, I continue to think that the editorial direction
of
> dropping the detailed state machines is beyond what we need to do to
> succeed now, but I'm not against it on technical or editorial grounds.
As
> noted in my comments, Dave has kept more detail in the binding than in
the
> MEP, and I think if we do decide to drop the full state machines the
MEP
> descriptions should at least have detail similar to what's in his
binding
> writeup.  Not a big deal I think.
> 
> Bottom line:  I'd prefer to go with something closer to the draft I
sent
> [2].  I think it easily meets the requirements we've been given, and
is
> much closer to the minimal needed to declare success.  At this point
in
> the life of our workgroup, I think we should take such paths when
> reasonably possible.  Stability is important, and I'm not convinced
that
> the state machines as documented are proving a big barrier to those
who
> need to figure them out.  I do agree that they are cumbesome.  I was
never
> enthusiastic about them and I'm still not, but they were a compromise
we
> made to get consensus of those who joined the group to create SOAP.  I
> don't think we've had a tremendous amount of "new information" to
suggest
> reopenning our status quo on them.  If the group decides to do so, I
think
> Dave's editorial style signals a good direction, modulo the specific
> details mentioned in comments.
> 
> Note that I will be on the call today, but must send regrets for next
> week.  Thank you
> 
> Noah
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2006Jan/0124.html
> [2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xml-dist-app/2006Jan/0050.html
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------
> Noah Mendelsohn
> IBM Corporation
> One Rogers Street
> Cambridge, MA 02142
> 1-617-693-4036
> --------------------------------------
> 
>