Issue 194: Faults for uninitialized partnerLinks

Title: Message

 

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 Issue 194: Faults for uninitialized 
partnerLinksStatus: received
Date added: 4 Mar 
2005
Categories: Partner 
Links
Date submitted: 04 March 2005
Submitter: Yaron Y. Goland
Description: Thanks 
to Alexandre Alves of BEA for pointing this problem out. 

What happens if someone tries to do an invoke or a receive on a partnerLink 
that doesn't have an initialized EPR? 

An interesting question is - can such errors ever happen? As I argue below I 
believe the answer is yes. 

In the case of receive the answer would seem to be no. Only the engine can 
set myRole EPRs so it's reasonable to assume that the engine will set all EPRs. 

But one wonders. 

For example, what if an administrator sets up their server (using a mechanism 
completely outside of BPEL) to say 'myRole in partnerLink PLA should be set to 
the same value as myRole in partnerLink PLB' and then at run time PLB never 
actually gets set because it's never used? Such an error could only be 
statically determined using pessimistic analysis which we have generally stayed 
away from. So it is at least theoretically possible for a myRole to be 
uninitialized at run time. What's interesting though is that this is a server 
and not a programmer error but it's an error nevertheless. 

In the case of invoke the answer is more likely to be yes, the error can 
happen. If we assume that static analysis occurs before binding then clearly one 
can end up in situations where the code was written to rely on a binding that 
could set EPRs and instead ended up deployed on one that didn't. Similarly even 
if static analysis occurs after binding we still have a problem because if the 
binding doesn't set EPRs and the program is required to manually set them we 
still end up with the pessimistic analysis problem. That is, the only way we can 
be sure that a BPEL using a non-EPR setting binding won't fault out on an 
uninitialized partnerRole on an invoke is if we use pessimistic static 
analysis.
Submitter’s proposal: Introduce a 
bpws:uninitializedPartnerRole fault.
Changes: 4 Mar 2005 - new 
issue

 Best 
Regards,

Tony                           

  
  

    
      

    
      
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