Subject: [core] Questions & Comments for PubSub updated Proposal

From: Jim Schaad <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 15:58:07 -0700

I was sitting down to look at trying to update my PubSub implementation to
deal with the updated proposal.  At this point I don't think I have enough
information to progress in terms of getting things done.  There are just too
many unanswered questions at this point.

1.  Attribute Inheritance:  I like the idea of doing inheritance because it
makes life easier for lots of people.  However, just playing with it I ended
up needing to be able to decide which attributes are really inherited and
which are not.  In addition, I needed to figure out which attributes were
supposed to deal with the topic and which are to deal with the data.   As an
example, if you look at attributes dealing with ACL control, there are going
to be three different sets of them running around.  A)  Who can create the
topic to begin with, B) Who and update the topic now it is created, and C)
Who is permitted to access the data item.  These are attacked to three
different resources in the design and only two of them (presumably) are
inheritable.  Another such attribute is lifetime where the lifetime of the
topic and the lifetime of the data are going to be different.

2.  It is not clear to me if a data node is supposed to be able to provide a
CoRAL document for information that relates to it.  I am assuming that it is
not because otherwise it would not be possible to publish a CoRAL document
as the data.

3.  Is attribute inheritance live or static?  Are the attributes set at
creation or if the attributes are changed on the parent are they trickled
down?

4.  Is there a way for every attribute to say "don't inherit" which I
currently assume is that the value would be set to "null".

Jim