RE: Manifest inclusion issue

[David Burdett <david.burdett@commerceone.com>]

Folks

What we are talking about here is XML style. There is also another issue
that I think Chris raised about how we indicate that there was no previous
message to the one that was sent.

XML makes it very easy to make element optional in a controlled way. I don't
see any real difference between the semantics:

1. "If the Message Manifest is missing, then it means that there is no ebXML
Payload" and
2. "If the content of the Messsage Manifest is empty, then it means that
there is no ebXML Payload"

Similarly, we have the definition of a RefToMessageId to consider which
identifies the immediately preceding message that caused this message to be
produced. Every message in a message set will have an "immediately preceding
message" unless that message is the first message in the message set.

Again I don't see any fundamental semantic difference between:
1. "RefToMessageId must refer to the preceding message that caused the
message to be created except for the first message in a message set when it
is omitted.", and
2. "RefToMessageId must refer to the preceding message that caused the
message to be created except for the first message in a message set when it
is set to zero."

I think that, in both examples, option 2 is the better XML style.

David

-----Original Message-----
From: ian.c.jones@bt.com [mailto:ian.c.jones@bt.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 9:37 AM
To: ebXML-Transport@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Manifest inclusion issue


All TP&R,

	for the manifest is there any problem using the XML structure
<MANIFEST/> to show that it is empty, this should not impose any undue
overhead. (This assumes the manifest is now mandatory).  From my
understanding the manifest would be a nested data structure when populated
so this would easily show it was empty, alternatively why not put an
explicit attribute.  OR did I miss the point completely !!  I would have
raised this in the conf. call but we timed out.   

Ian Jones

PP E1B
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