Raiser: Mike Edwards

Target: sca-bpel-1.1-spec-cd02.doc

Description:

Currently, any declaration of a partnerLink within a BPEL process results in a <service/> or a <reference/> appearing in the componentType of the
BPEL process.

This is not desirable in all circumstances:

• it may be that a BPEL process is written with an inner loop, where the inner loop is implemented as a nested <scope/>. In this inner loop, it may
  be that a partnerLink is declared within the nested scope and used purely as a "local variable" within the loop, for example where it is a reference
  and the reference target/EPR is assigned to it from the contents of a variable held in an outer scope.

In these circumstances, the partnerLink in the inner loop is shadowing a partnerLink in the outer scope - logically it represents the same partnerLink
reference as the partnerLink in the outer scope.

At present, SCA cannot handle a situation such as this - the inner partnerLink is introspected as a <reference/> and so is the outer partnerLink - this
means 2 references appear when only one is called for.

To change this, it is necessary to provide a capability for the writer of a BPEL process to indicate that a given partnerLink should NOT be used
to introspect a <service/> or a <reference/> in the componentType.

Proposal:

Add a new SCA BPEL extension attribute that can be used to annotate a <partnerLink/> element.

@skip

boolean - default value is false

When @skip="true", the <partnerLink/> element is ignored when introspecting the compoenntType of the BPEL Process.

The changes are shown in this marked up version of CD02, where the changes are in Section 3.3 and Appendix A.