John,
In thinking about this, I’m not sure
backtracking needs make for “unclean code”. It seems to me that, as
the ED07 flowcharts reflect, SEP selection is just as necessary during the authority
resolution stage as after it, and thus implementations need to maintain their state
in the XRDS “tree” no matter whether they are following Refs at the
XRD level or the Service level. (The same thing applies to Redirects but Refs
are more complex so in this message we’ll just discuss Refs).
For example, say you want to resolve an
XRI for an OpenID SEP, and by following Refs during both authority resolution and
SEP selection, you ended out with the following XRDS tree:
XRDS ref=”@a*b*c”
XRD
for *a
XRD
for *b
XRDS
ref=”@x*y”
XRD
for *x
XRD
for *y
XRDS
ref=”@d*e*f”
XRD
for *d
XRD
for *e
XRD
for *f
/XRDS
/XRDS
XRD
for *c ;end
of authority resolution
XRDS
ref=”@m*n”
XRD
for *m
XRD
for *n
XRDS
ref=”@p*q*r”
XRD
for *p
XRD
for *q
XRD
for *r ;end of SEP
selection
/XRDS
/XRDS
/XRDS
It seems to me that to keep our
backtracking rules simple and clean, an implementation must keep track that
when it hits the first Ref and starts the nested XRDS for @x*y, and again when
it hits the next Ref and starts the next nested XRDS for @d*e*f. Then when it
finishes authority resolution, it knows where it needs to “back up to”
to place the final XRD for *c. Then the same thing starts all over again once authority
resolution is complete but the resolver needs to follow the Refs it encounters in
the final stage of SEP selection.
From that perspective, doing SEP selection
during authority resolution is no different than doing SEP selection after authority
resolution is over – the only difference is that in the first stage you
have a pre-defined SEP selection parameters, while in the second stage you have
input-defined SEP selection parameters.
But otherwise the two traversal paths and
requirements are the same. So it would seem simpler and more consistent to keep
the traversal/backtracking rules the same. (Anything we can do to keep Redirect
and Ref processing simpler and more consistent gets my vote since it’s
complicated enough as it is.)
I too would very much like to get the
other implementor’s (Victor, Kermit, Markus, Wil, that’s you ;-)
view on this ASAP – any change here would be much bigger than any of the
rest of the changes to ED06, all of which are pretty minor at this point.
=Drummond
From: John Bradley
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007
6:26 PM
To: Chasen, Les
Cc: ;
; Tan, William
Subject: Re: [xri] Backtracking
My question is more what constitutes a failure when the ref is at the
XRD level.
While the original query may be performing SEP selection, is it our
intent for the authority resolution step to maintain the state of SEP
selection?
The current proposal has the Authority resolution stage tracking what
service is being asked for, and failing the Authority resolution of the ref if
the service is not found so it can try the next ref.
My only concern is that this makes for unclean code.
=ve7jtb
PS I am not touching the ref must be followed question I have already
done that once today.
On 25-Oct-07, at 6:00 PM, Chasen, Les wrote:
I am not sure
when this change came about. REFs should only be followed in the search of a
service whether at the xrd level or service level.
Drummond, in one of you last emails you indicate that a ref and a redirect at
the xrd level have the same behavior in that it is followed without inspection
of the local SEPs. This is fine for redirect but not ref. Ref should only be
followed if the service being sought is not found.
--------------------------
http://xri.net/=les.chasen
----- Original Message -----
From: John Bradley <>
To: OASIS XRI TC <>
Cc: Kermit Snelson <>;
Tan, William
Sent: Thu Oct 25 20:38:42 2007
Subject: [xri] Backtracking
Reading the spec 11.5 and looking at the flowcharts we now have
backtracking for refs at the XRD level.
For these XRD level refs we iterate through refs and redirects in
priority order.
My question is what causes backtracking. As we have not moved to SEP
selection at his point, is success just returning the XRD?
I see and completely agree on backtracking if the XRD is not returned.
However the spec now indicates that we move to SEP selection once the
XRD is returned and if the SEP is not found we backtrack to the next
ref in authority resolution.
Before we added refs to SEPs this perhaps made more sense.
I prefer the notion of doing this with SEP refs:
1. authority resolution and finding the XRD,
2. Service Selection,
3. Iterating through authority resolution and SEP selection for each
ref in priority order.
If we backtrack from SEP selection into authority resolution I think
it increases implementation complexity.
So we can leave the current behavior and backtrack if no SEP is
found, or change it to only backtrack if no XRD is found.
I am happy with the backtracking on the SEP refs I think that makes
sense.
I will contribute a clarification for 11.5 depending on what behavior
people want.
I particularly would like Kermit and Wil's opinions.
I can live with it ether way as long as its unambiguous.
