Re-thinking "Discovery"

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David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
1/23/2003

Motivation

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Existing diagrams are ambiguous
Vague or conflicting definitions
E.g.,"Service Provider" and "discovery"
Triangle diagram is misleading
"Publish" and "Find" strongly imply directionality.  (All that matters is that the two parties agree on the WSD - not who sent it.)
"Find" is not always needed.  (Often "GET" is enough.)

Motivation (cont.)

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Too much emphasis on "discovery" role
Not needed in many scenarios
People think "Discovery Role" means UDDI.
Current draft and model ignores semantics, even though semantics are present and relevant
Explicit acknowledgement of semantics also helps clarify where choreography fits in
(Choreography language allows more semantics to be machine processable)

What I Did

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Carefully analyzed 5 general scenarios
(3 main + 2 variations)
Identified actors, actions and artifacts
Defined terms
Drew diagrams that accurately model them
Described sequence of operation
Conversed at length with several WG members to get feedback, clarify, explain, etc.

Scenarios & Diagrams

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(See http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/2/10/roles_clean.htm )

FAQ 1 [Re: Scenario 1]
Isn't there still "discovery", even if it happened earlier (static)?

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No.  "Discovery" refers to the transfer of information about the WS.
"Discovery" of  WS should not be confused with human exchange of non-WS info.
I.e., using the term "discovery" for other purposes confuses the issue.  E.g., humans exchanging phone numbers.

FAQ 2 [Re: Scenario 1]
Isn't there still "discovery" even if it is no-op in this case?

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The scenario models only the actual roles that are required by the scenario.
It does not model null roles that are not required by the scenario.
Any null role ("discovery", "foo", "fum", whatever) can be hypothesized and added to any model, but doing so proves nothing.

FAQ 3
Can't these diagrams be combined into a single architecture diagram?

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My opinion:
I don't think so
Not without being misleading or inaccurate
Except for a VERY simple diagram with only two actors (client and service)