Changes from CMDBf version 0.95 to 1.0

These things always take longer than I wish they would, but the CMDB Federation 1.0 spec is really now available for review on http://cmdbf.org.  It will stay there for an indefinite period of time, at least until it becomes an approved standard (a not-so-big assumption I hope).

I've been asked to summarize the changes from the 0.95 spec.  Here's a little guidance to understanding what changed:

• The metaphor of selection was changed to align more with SQL.  The new metaphor is, for each template, select what you want in the results, and then apply constraints on the records and properties.  This is roughly comparable to "select column-names from table where value constraints apply".  In XML the structure in a template is either:

   <contentSelector> ?

   <instanceIdConstraint> ?

   <recordConstraint> *

or:

   <xpathExpression> *

• The instanceId constraint was changed to allow a template to match multiple instances by instanceId.
• A new <depthLimit> element was added to <relationshipTemplate> to allow variable depth on graph traversal.
• New common properties of records, such as lastModified, were added to a <recordMetadata> element as the second child of each <record> element.
• The <propertyValue> constraint may now be directed to <recordMetadata> properties using the @recordMetadata attribute.
• The <record> @recordId attribute was moved to a child element of <recordMetadata> to allow for query on recordId.
• The <xpathSelector> was replaced with <xpathExpression> child of itemTemplate and relationshipTemplate.  This allows greater control of XPath profiles and results.
• The <propertySubsetDirective> element was replaced with <contentSelector> with <selectedRecordType> and <selectedProperty> children.
• The <contentSelector> @matchedRecords attribute can now control whether all selected records are returned, or only the records that matched (the default).
• The <propertyValue> record constraint may now be limited to selected record types.
• The <dropDirective> element was replaced by @suppressFromResult attribute on itemTemplate and relationshipTemplate.  The functionality is the same.
• The relationship is now considered a type of item.  This means two things - the "item" part of a relationship could be returned in a nodes list if it matches the constraints of an itemTemplate, and a relationship could be the source or target of another relationship.  There are some interesting use cases for this, but I'm not sure how widely implemented this will be.
• "Section 6 - Service Metadata" was added.  This allows an MDR to publish the record types and optional query capabilities that are supported by the Query and/or Registration service.
• "Section 7 - Secure, Reliable, Asynchronous Federation" was expanded to discuss issues and considerations to be addressed by the implementation, that are mostly beyond the scope of the CMDB Federation specification.
• SOAP faults were defined for each operation.