[Oslc-Automation] Proposal for parameter definitions

[Michael F Fiedler]

Talking to a colleague (Sam Padgett from the CM workgroup)  about the
automation workgroup's thoughts on using instance shapes as a possible
means of informing consumers what "types" are expected for parameters in an
automation plan led to a suggestion to use oslc:Property [1] as the
parameter definition.   Please take a look at the proposal on the wiki [2]
for tomorrow's workgroup meeting.   The general approach would be to do
away with the current Parameter Definition resource and replace it with an
attribute of type oslc:Property (or an extension to oslc:Property).

An alternate approach along this same line would be to have the Automation
Plan reference a full-blown Automation Request creation shape, including
oslc:Properties for the parameters.   The positive to this approach would
be that the consumer only needs to request that shape to discover
everything it needs to know about creating requests for a specific plan.
The drawbacks would be additional service provider complexity and the
potential need to make shape support a MUST.

[1] -
http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OSLCCoreSpecAppendixA#Value_type_Property
[2] - http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/AutoParmDefProposal

Regards,
Mike

Michael Fiedler
IBM Rational Software
fiedler at us.ibm.com
919-254-4170