How many ALSs in an activity?

When going over what the Context model assumed to 
ALS-to-activity bindings, the following questions arose:

 

Do multiple ALSs register for a single protocol? 
How does the context service know how many ALSs must be registered for a 
particular protocol?

 

I hope we've been clear in the UML/text that the 
intention was always that multiple ALSs could register with a context service 
(aka activity service). However, what wasn't clear was the role of the 'type' 
field in the context. This was intended to map to an implied set of ALSs and 
recipients of the type could infer from it what was in the context. Defining 
*what* the type is is within the specification 
IMO, but saying *how* it maps to specific combinations of ALSs should be outside 
the scope of the spec. What I mean is that we shouldn't say that 
urn:foo:bar:1234 is a transactional protocol-type with only a single transaction 
ALS registered with an activity, whereas urn:foo:bar:5678 is a 
secure+transactional protocol-type. Other specifications should do that. (It's 
the same as defining the formatID in the OTS context).

 

So, as far as the myself, Greg and Eric are 
concerned, this is more an issue of text clarification. Comments?

 

Mark.

 

----
Mark Little,
Chief Architect, 
Transactions,
Arjuna Technologies Ltd.
 
www.arjuna.com