ISSUE 11 - Define Conformance Targets

OK, first some discussion, then a Proposal:

Discussion:

There are a number of possible targets
for the conformance statements in the Assembly specification:

- SCA Runtime (I note that this is a
somewhat ill-defined target...) which executes the artifacts described
in

the specification

- SCA Assembler / Deployer (who may
be responsible for creating/modifying the artifacts) - on the other

hand I think it is a little strange
to dictate what a person may do....

- Other programs which may handle SCA
artifacts - I am thinking principally of tooling.  These are not

runtimes that are executing the artifacts,
but shouldn't they also be required to react to artifacts which are 

illegal according to the specification?

- SCA Composite documents themselves.
 This is one I find harder to consider.  The spec does largely
deal

with what is legal and what is illegal
within these documents - but are the documents themselves the 

targets?  We have to decide which
aspects of the documents are mandatory and which are optional from 

a runtime support perspective (eg <composite/>
is mandatory, so is <component/>, but <implementation.java/>

is not.    There is the other
aspect of what is mandatory and what is optional in actual document instances

(this is aimed more at the developer/assembler/deployer)
.  Plus there is the handling of extensions of all

kinds.  The SCA composites are
deliberately very extensible.

Proposal:

The following conformance targets are
identified by the SCA Assembly specification:

a) SCA runtime

which is a program which executes the
entities described by an SCA assembly, which is a collection

of one or more SCA composites.

b) SCA Deployer

which is an entity (usually a person)
which is responsible for deploying SCA artifacts into the SCA

Domain and causing them to execute on
an SCA runtime.

c) SCA Assembler

which is a person responsible for creating
SCA composites.

The following are NOT conformance targets:

- SCA composite documents (their syntax
and sematics are defined in the Assembly specification,

but they are not in themselves conformance
targets)

- Other programs which deal with SCA
assemblies, such as tools/editors

Yours,  Mike.

Strategist - Emerging Technologies, SCA & SDO.

Co Chair OASIS SCA Assembly TC.

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