[Oslc-recon] When applying reconciliation rules, should we take into account case sensitivity ?

[Tuan Dang]

Hi all,

The specific case is in the use of crtv:SoftwareServer, and particularly 
crtv:name when representing an Oracle database instance.
Oracle on Windows treats the instance name as case insensitive. Oracle on 
*IX treats the instance name as case sensitive.

Existing product A transforms all Oracle instance names to lower case.
Existing product B leaves all Oracle instance names as-is.

A and B are now OSLC service providers and registers their Oracle 
instances into registry R which functions as a reconciliation engine.
R does case-sensitive string comparisons by default. At this point, data 
from A and B are not reconciling and the product teams are
trying to agree on one common way of storing instance names.

The spec[1] and implementers' guidance doc[2] treat this on a per-property 
basis. The issue is that we are always working from behind. Some new set 
of data
might now force a change in both the spec and existing product 
implementations. 


Some proposals that have been discussed:
   1 - Do not handle in the specification. This can be dealt with in 
implementation , either via agreement between the providers or via a 
transformation component in
        the reconciliation engine.
   2 - Make case insensivity the default behavior for reconciliation in 
all cases involving string names. Even if something has to be compared or 
queried in a case-sensitive way,
        customers will not deliberately use identifiers that depend on 
case sensitivity.  Reconciling in a case insensitive way will bypass all 
these issues and we will not
        have to worry migration or incompatibilities.

I'll add this discussion to our next WG meeting as well.

[1] 
http://open-services.net/wiki/reconciliation/OSLC-Reconciliation-Specification-Version-2.0
[2] 
http://open-services.net/wiki/reconciliation/OSLC-Reconciliation-Guidance-for-Implementers/ 




Thanks ! T

Tuan Dang
Tivoli OSLC governance, OSLC Reconciliation workgroup lead, Tivoli Common 
Data Model
Internet: tdang at us.ibm.com
phone: (919) 224-1242 T/L 687-1242
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