Further discussion on WS-SX Examples document

[Prateek Mishra <prateek.mishra@oracle.com>]

This message responds to the following questions from the May 30 
conference call minutes:

[quote]
   1. Is an examples document in scope of the TC?

   2. What specific examples are or are not in scope in an examples 
document?

    3. What additional work or steps are required before the examples 
doc can progress to CD?

[\quote]

1. The starting point of the examples document goes back to May 2006 when
this work was proposed by Ashok Malhotra[1]. The points made then were 
that the
SecurityPolicy specification is quite complext (111 pages in its final 
incarnation)
and that most people would have a difficult time figuring out even 
simple example policies.
The idea was to collect examples with explanations, this would provide 
readers a
starting point for many scenarios of interest.

I think the question of whether such a document is "in scope" is 
actually ill-posed.

A more appropriate question would be: is it appropriate to publish a 
complex standard like
SecurityPolicy without an examples document?

The examples are needed as a kind of sanity-test so that we can see how 
SecurityPolicy
features may be used to secure message exchanges in a few cases of 
interest to the TC.
Aside from the educational and labor-saving aspects, it is also a 
indication of openness in that
readers need not purchase proprietary products in order to understand 
the use of
the SecurityPolicy specification.

Finally, if we look at comparable specifications like
W3C XML Schema we find them accompanied by a systematic and detailed 
primer document.


2. The examples document has been quite extensively reviewed by many TC 
members
and many suggestions for change have been made and implemented.
 
If any vendor has a specific concern with a particular example, they 
should explain what this is
and I am sure the Editors would update the document appropriately.


3. I believe that as soon as any remaining open issues are resolved, we 
should conduct a
CD vote for the document.

------------------------------------------------------


[1] http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ws-sx/200604/msg00031.html