Title: user profile proposal
Just to answer Mike’s questions:
Yes, I propose to allow multiple kinds of profiles. One use case would be
allowing the common 1.0 P3P derived values to be transmitted along with a more sophisticated
encoding of additional user data.
I would agree the XML schema is superficially
similar but note that no <extensions> tag need be used in order to allow
the two communicating parties to exchange profile elements! And that is how it should
be for all explicit extension points we define in the protocol, in my opinion.
Regards,
Andre
From: Michael Freedman [mailto:]
Sent: 24 August 2005 18:43
To:
Subject: Re: [wsrp-interfaces]
user profile proposal
Why did you define this so the producer can receive
multiple profiles? What is the use case for this? Where do we
expect consumers to manage/construct more then one?
Also, I find it interesting that in the end you have turned user profiles into
an extension. i.e. they have the same form. To me this is a step
backwards -- and instead I would prefer to continue to carry the P3P style user
profile formally in the UserContext as we did in 1.0 to reflect the fact that
this is the preferred/protocol profile and then tell consumers/producers that
decide to use a different profile to merely carry that profile in the
extensions field. This is especially true given your strong preference not to attempt to provide more meta data in the protocol related to
user profiles
-Mike-
Andre Kramer wrote:
The following
should allow alternative types of profile data to flow, making our old P3P
based information one example of such profile descriptions:
In 1.0 we had:
<complexType name="UserContext">
<sequence>
<element
name="userContextKey"
type="xsd:string" />
<element
name="userCategories"
type="xsd:string"
minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"
/>
<element
name="profile"
type="types:UserProfile"
minOccurs="0" />
<element
name="extensions"
type="types:Extension"
minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"
/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
<element name="UserContext" type="types:UserContext"
/>
Proposal: Replace "profile"
element in above with a "profiles"
element (note different type and that mulitple occurances are now allowed):
<element name="profiles" type="types:Profile"
minOccurs="0"
maxOccurs="unbounded"
/>
Where the new
Profile type is defined as follows:
<complexType name="Profile">
<sequence>
<any
/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
We would also define a global "userProfile" element, as well as keep
the (P3P) UserProfile type in our
schema (could move UserProfile to separate useful types xsd):
<element name="userProfile" type="types:UserProfile"/>
This allows 0, 1 or many profiles to be communicated
in the user context in <profiles> elements. The understanding is that all
such profiles relate to the user. A specific usage is to communicate the 1.0 UserProfile data. This would now be
carried in an element named "profiles"
:
<userContext>
...
<profiles>
<userProfile> … 1.0 P3P stuff ...</userProfile> <!--
note that userProfile element is NOT required to be here but some XML is.
-->
</profiles>
…
<extensions> …
</extensions> ...
</userContext>
Possible types of profiles can be listed using
ServiceDescription.customUserProfileItemDescriptions and RegistrationData.customUserProfileData. On
reflection, I strongly prefer not to attempt to provide more meta data in the
protocol related to user profiles. If a XML processor recognizes the namespaced
elements it will already have the schema (if defined).
Regards,
Andre
