Issue 1542: Type code operations under-specified (orb_revision) Source: (, ) Nature: Revision Severity: Summary: Summary: On page 8-38: Member_count [sic] returns the number of members constituting the type. This is a little ambiguous and easily confused with the number of parameters. For clarity, I would suggest to add a sentence to make this clearer, e.g. "For example, the member count of a structure with three members is three." This would help to avoid confusion with parameters (if I am not careful, I might think the number is six, because a the three members of a structure are described by six parameters, or I might think that the number is nine, because a three-member structure has a total of nine parameters). The origin for the index to the member_name operation is never defined. Presumably, indexes start at zero? If so, this must be stated. Resolution: Revised Text: Actions taken: June 24, 1998: received issue February 23, 1999: closed issue Discussion: End of Annotations:===== Return-Path: X-Authentication-Warning: tigger.dstc.edu.au: michi owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 12:49:21 +1000 (EST) From: Michi Henning To: issues@omg.org, orb_revision@omg.org Subject: Type code operations under-specified On page 8-38: Member_count [sic] returns the number of members constituting the type. This is a little ambiguous and easily confused with the number of parameters. For clarity, I would suggest to add a sentence to make this clearer, e.g. "For example, the member count of a structure with three members is three." This would help to avoid confusion with parameters (if I am not careful, I might think the number is six, because a the three members of a structure are described by six parameters, or I might think that the number is nine, because a three-member structure has a total of nine parameters). The origin for the index to the member_name operation is never defined. Presumably, indexes start at zero? If so, this must be stated. Cheers, Michi. -- Michi Henning +61 7 33654310 DSTC Pty Ltd +61 7 33654311 (fax) University of Qld 4072 michi@dstc.edu.au AUSTRALIA http://www.dstc.edu.au/BDU/staff/michi-henning.html Return-Path: Sender: jon@floorboard.com Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 21:36:46 -0700 From: Jonathan Biggar To: Michi Henning CC: issues@omg.org, orb_revision@omg.org Subject: Re: Type code operations under-specified References: Michi Henning wrote: > > On page 8-38: > > Member_count [sic] returns the number of members > constituting the type. > > This is a little ambiguous and easily confused with the number of > parameters. > For clarity, I would suggest to add a sentence to make this clearer, > e.g. > "For example, the member count of a structure with three members is > three." > > This would help to avoid confusion with parameters (if I am not > careful, > I might think the number is six, because a the three members of a > structure > are described by six parameters, or I might think that the number is > nine, > because a three-member structure has a total of nine parameters). > > The origin for the index to the member_name operation is never > defined. > Presumably, indexes start at zero? If so, this must be stated. Actually it is even more important to give an example of the member count for unions, particularly for a union with more than one discriminator value on a particular branch, since each of those labels counts as one member. -- Jon Biggar Floorboard Software jon@floorboard.com jon@biggar.org Return-Path: X-Authentication-Warning: tigger.dstc.edu.au: michi owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 14:45:24 +1000 (EST) From: Michi Henning To: Jonathan Biggar cc: issues@omg.org, orb_revision@omg.org Subject: Re: Type code operations under-specified On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Jonathan Biggar wrote: > Actually it is even more important to give an example of the member > count for unions, particularly for a union with more than one > discriminator value on a particular branch, since each of those > labels > counts as one member. Well, I've just raised another issue on that one. Certainly, what you say agrees with some implementations, but it is completely unspecified in the document. Also, as I've argued in the issue, this behavior is rather confusing. For a union with several case labels per member, the client decoding the type code needs to keep a list of member names that have been seen so far to realize when a member has more than one label. Not pretty (and yet another piece of evidence to suggest that multiple case labels for the same union member don't make much sense...) I've suggested an alternative solution in the issue by allowing the member_label() oepration to return an any containing a sequence of labels. The question though is how much existing code that would break (not that it would matter, given that it is completely undefined right now...) Cheers, Michi. -- Michi Henning +61 7 33654310 DSTC Pty Ltd +61 7 33654311 (fax) University of Qld 4072 michi@dstc.edu.au AUSTRALIA http://www.dstc.edu.au/BDU/staff/michi-henning.html