Colleagues, I find the concept of the Request Context being a "notional" document has been lost once again in the most recent revisions. I know we want to avoid specifying implementation details, but this concept has been VERY unclear to implementors :-). With the current text, I can guarantee that we WILL NOT get implementations that meet our intent. I propose the following changes to make our intent clear: 1. Glossary, "Context handler": add The context handler is also responsible for retrieving attribute values as needed when the PDP evaluates attribute designators or attribute selectors. 2. Section 7.9 Attributes: in the paragraph describing attribute retrieval, change the first sentence from: "The PDP SHALL retrieve the values of attributes from the request context that match the attribute designator or attribute selector in the policy and form them into a bag of values with the specified DataType attribute." to: "The PDP shall request the values of attributes in the request context from the context handler. The PDP references the attributes as if they were in a physical request context document, but the context handler is responsible for obtaining and supplying the requested values. The context handler SHALL return the values of attributes that match the attribute designator or attribute selector and form them into a bag of values with the specified DataType attribute. Anne ------ Anne Anderson
Anne.Anderson@Sun.COM Sun Microsystems Laboratories Burlington, MA 781-442-0928