Comparison of WS-Context and WS-RF

[Guy Rixon]

Matthew,

I have a general idea, but I would need to go back to the WS-CAF docs to check
details.

IIRC, WS-CAF does what WS-RF does but doesn't bind the context token to an
endpoint address. This allows the same context _token_ to be recognized by
multiple endpoints, and that supports transactions. However, it's still a
valid use of WS-Context/WS-CAF to generate a context inside the only servcie
that will recognise it. I.e., we can use a WS-Context token instead of a
WS-Resource to denote an activity.

Again IIRC, WS-CAF has the context-management controls of WS-RF: i.e. the
ability to negotiate the lifetime of the context.  It hhas the ability to
notify "end of context", but not the ability to notify arbitrary
progress-metadata.

When I mailed yesterday, I was in a debate about how DAIS/OGSA-DAI fitted with
WS-I, WS-I+WS-CAF and WS-I+WS-RF. The conclusion so far is that all of DAIS,
including the stateful stuff, can be done with any of those options. The
choice of plumbing only affects the level of support and ease of programming.

So far, I can see two open-source implementations of WS-RF and I've found none
for WS-CAF (still looking,haven't searched very far yet).

If you like, I can look at deatils of async activities in WS-CAF. Any takers?

Cheers,
Guy

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Matthew Graham wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I have just read the article and I think it puts a nail into the WS-RF
> coffin. Do you have any inklings yet of how the asynchronous stuff would
> need to be amended to use WS-CAF?
>
> 	Cheers,
>
> 	Matthew
>

Guy Rixon 				        gtr at ast.cam.ac.uk
Institute of Astronomy   	                Tel: +44-1223-337542
Madingley Road, Cambridge, UK, CB3 0HA		Fax: +44-1223-337523