Issue - 306 - keepSrcElement behavior for virtual <assign>'s

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Issue - 306 - keepSrcElement behavior for virtual <assign>'s
Status: received

Date added: 4 Aug 2006

Date submitted: 04 August 2006

Submitter: Mark Ford

Description: 

The recent work on 280 got me thinking about keepSrcElement as it relates to the virtual assigns used to describe the behavior of <fromParts>, <toParts>, and receiving into or transmitting an element variable.

Section 10.3 describes invoking with an element variable as equivalent to declaring an anonymous temporary WSDL message variable and using the element’s value to “set the value of the part”. It is reasonable to assume that the spec here is referencing the <assign> rules but it is not explicit.

Section 10.3.1 describes invoking with <toParts> as working as a single virtual <assign> using the same rules as the real <assign>. There is a normative MUST in this section which precludes the possibility of applying the keepSrcElement behavior since it is off by default on the real <copy>.

The lack of the keepSrcElement behavior for these virtual <assign>’s means that the root element of the variable being sent or received may change when it is copied to or from the WSDL message. This is definitely the behavior with <fromPart> and <toPart> and could be interpreted as being the behavior of the element variants of web service activities.

Submitter's proposal: I’d like to see the keepSrcElement behavior enabled for these virtual <assign>’s. Dieter has suggested adding “keepSrcElement” to the <fromPart> and <toPart> elements to control this behavior. I’m agreeable to this but we still need to handle the element style invokes and receives. If we want the behavior to be configurable as opposed to always enabled then perhaps we could add the keepSrcElement attribute to the web service activities as well.

Changes: 4 Aug 2006 - new issue

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