Open Pluggable Edge Services                                     A. Beck
Internet-Draft                                       Lucent Technologies
Expires: April 26, 2004                                      A. Rousskov
                                                 The Measurement Factory
                                                        October 27, 2003


                     P: Message Processing Language
                       draft-ietf-opes-rules-p-02

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 26, 2004.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   P is a simple configuration language designed for specification of
   message processing instructions at application proxies. P can be used
   to instruct an intermediary how to manipulate the application message
   being proxied. Such instructions are needed in an Open Pluggable Edge
   Services (OPES) context.









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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.  Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Language elements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.1 Objects  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.2 Type conversion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   3.3 Operators  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   3.4 Expressions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   3.5 Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   3.6 Assignments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   4.  Modules  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   4.1 Interpreter-module interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   4.2 Modules and namespace  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   5.  OPES Services  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   6.  Failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   7.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
   8.  Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   A.  Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   B.  To-do  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
   C.  Acknowledgments  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   D.  Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
       Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
       Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
       Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
       Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . 30

























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1. Introduction

   The Open Pluggable Edge Services (OPES) architecture
   [I-D.ietf-opes-architecture], enables cooperative application
   services (OPES services) between a data provider, a data consumer,
   and zero or more OPES processors.  The application services under
   consideration analyze and possibly transform application-level
   messages exchanged between the data provider and the data consumer.
   OPES processors need to be told what services are to be applied to
   what application messages. P language can be used for this
   configuration task.

   In other words, P language primary objective is to express statements
   similar to:

                if message meets criteria C,
                then apply service S;

                                Figure 1

   Thus, P programs mostly deal with formulating message-dependent
   conditions and executing services.

   P design attempts to satisfy several conflicting goals:

   flexibility: Application intermediaries deal with a wide range of
      applications and protocols (SMTP, HTTP, RTSP, IM, etc.). The
      language must be able to accommodate virtually all known tasks in
      selecting a desired adaptation service for a message of a known
      application protocol (and conceivable future applications).

   efficiency: Language interpretation must be efficient enough to be
      comparable with other message processing overheads at a typical
      application proxy (e.g., interpreting HTTP headers to determine
      response cachability).

   simplicity: Typical configurations must be easy to write and
      understand for a typical OPES system administrator.

   correctness: Many message handling configurations are written without
      direct access to intermediaries that will use those
      configurations.  The extent of off-line (compile-time) correctness
      checks should catch all syntax errors and many common semantic
      errors such as undefined values and type conflicts.

   compactness: It is possible that some processing instructions will be
      piggybacked as headers/metadata to messages they refer to, placing
      stringent size requirements on language code.



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   security: It should be difficult if not impossible to write malicious
      code that would result in security vulnerability of compliant
      language interpreter.

   While P addresses OPES needs, its design is meant to be applicable
   for a variety of similar intermediary configuration tasks such as
   access control list (ACL) specification and message routing in proxy
   meshes or load-balancing environments.

   P design is based on a minimal useful subset of features from several
   programming languages such as R (S), Smalltalk, and C++. Technically
   speaking, P is a single-assignment, lazy evaluation, strongly typed
   functional programming language.






































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2. Syntax

   P syntax is defined by the following Augmented Backus-Naur Form
   (ABNF) [RFC2234]:

   code = *statement

   statement =
        expression-statement /
        assignment-statement /
        compound-statement /
        if-statement /
        comment /
        ";"

   if-statement = if-head *if-alt [if-tail]
   if-head      = "if" "(" expression ")" "{" code "}"
   if-alt       = "elsif" "(" expression ")" "{" code "}"
   if-tail      = "else" "{" code "}"

   compound-statement = "{" code "}"

   assignment = identifier ":=" expression ";"

   expression-statement = expression ";"

   expression =
        constant-expression /
        name /
        function-call /
        "(" expression ")" /
        "{" code "}" /
        unary-op expression /
        expression binary-op expression

   constant-expression = boolean / number / string

   name = identifier *( "." identifier)

   function-call = name "(" [call-parameters] ")"

   call-parameters = expression *( "," expression)

   identifier = (ALPHA / "_") *(ALPHA / DIGIT / "_")

   unary-op =
        "+" / "-" /
        identifier



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   binary-op =
        "==" / "!=" /
        "<" / ">" / ">=" / "<=" /
        "+" / "-" / "*" / "/" / "%" /
        identifier

   comment = "/*" OCTET "*/"             ; no nesting allowed

   boolean = "true" / "false"

   number = 1*DIGIT ; no leading zeros

   string = DQUOTE *string-char DQUOTE

   string-char =
        %x00-21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-FF / ; any but quote and backslash
        escape-sequence               ; C++ or XML escape sequence? XXX


                                Figure 2































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3. Language elements

3.1 Objects

   P is centered around the concept of an "object" that is similar to
   objects from other object-oriented languages. An object is,
   essentially, a piece of data or information. The value of an object
   is indistinguishable from the object itself. Object type is defined
   by the semantics of applicable operations and manipulations.  Almost
   everything in P is an object, even a piece of code. Here are a few P
   objects, listed one per line:

        0
        "http://www.ietf.org/"
        Core
        { a := 1/0; }

   Many objects contain other objects, often called members.  Members
   are accessible by their name, using the member access operator (".").
   Member access operator has a single parameter: the name of the member
   to access. All P objects support "." operator, but not all objects
   have members. Here are a few examples:

        Http.message.headers
        Core.interpreter.stop
        "string".nosuchmember

   Many objects support operators other than member access. For example,
   member objects that support function call "()" operator are often
   call methods.

        Http.message.headers.have(header)
        Core.interpreter.stop()
        1 / 0
        "string" + "string"

   P operators are described in Section 3.3. below.

   P does not have built-in facilities for describing object types. When
   writing a P program, only objects known to interpreter (e.g., Core)
   and objects generated by known objects (e.g., Http.message.headers)
   can be used. P supports loadable modules that can be used to add
   objects to support new application protocols.  In fact, P core
   supports no application protocols directly. Instead, modules like
   "HTTP" can be used to process messages depending on application
   protocol being proxied.





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3.2 Type conversion

   Interpreters MUST NOT silently convert (cast) object types.  When
   explicit conversion (casting) is needed objects should provide
   polymorphic methods (methods with the same name but different formal
   parameter types).

3.3 Operators

   Operators are used in P to denote common operations on built-in
   object types and language constructs. No operators are defined for
   objects provided by modules. P operators do not modify their
   operands. Note that all operators may result a failure.

   Unary Operators

   +--------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+
   |   operator   |   operand   | result type | semantics              |
   |              |     type    |             |                        |
   +--------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+
   |       +      |    number   |    number   | returns operand        |
   |              |             |             |                        |
   |       -      |    number   |    number   | returns zero minus     |
   |              |             |             | operand                |
   |              |             |             |                        |
   |    import    |    string   |    module   | imports module members |
   |              |             |             | into global namespace  |
   |              |             |             | and returns a module   |
   |              |             |             | object that can be     |
   |              |             |             | used to access this    |
   |              |             |             | module members         |
   |              |             |             | explicitly; operand is |
   |              |             |             | module identifier, a   |
   |              |             |             | URI; fails on any      |
   |              |             |             | error                  |
   |              |             |             |                        |
   |      not     |   boolean   |   boolean   | logical negation       |
   |              |             |             |                        |
   |      try     |     code    |   boolean   | interpret operand and  |
   |              |             |             | return true or fail;   |
   |              |             |             | try is the only        |
   |              |             |             | operator defined for   |
   |              |             |             | code; try never        |
   |              |             |             | returns false          |
   +--------------+-------------+-------------+------------------------+






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   Binary Operators

   +-------------+-----------+----------+------------------------------+
   |   operator  |  operands |  result  | semantics                    |
   |             |    type   |   type   |                              |
   +-------------+-----------+----------+------------------------------+
   |      ==     |  boolean  |  boolean | simple value equality        |
   |             |     or    |          |                              |
   |             |  integer  |          |                              |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      !=     |  boolean  |  boolean | simple value inequality      |
   |             | or number |          |                              |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      <      |   number  |  boolean | less than; ">", "<=" and     |
   |             |           |          | ">=" are defined similarly   |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |    equal    |   string  |  boolean | left string equals right     |
   |             |           |          | string                       |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |   contains  |   string  |  boolean | left contains right          |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   | begins_with |   string  |  boolean | left string begins with the  |
   |             |           |          | right string                 |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |  ends_with  |   string  |  boolean | left string ends with the    |
   |             |           |          | right string                 |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |     and     |  boolean  |  boolean | short-circuited logical      |
   |             |           |          | conjunction: the right       |
   |             |           |          | expression is evaluated only |
   |             |           |          | if the left expression is    |
   |             |           |          | true                         |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      or     |  boolean  |  boolean | short-circuited logical      |
   |             |           |          | disjunction: the right       |
   |             |           |          | expression is evaluated only |
   |             |           |          | if the left expression is    |
   |             |           |          | false                        |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |     xor     |  boolean  |  boolean | exclusive logical            |
   |             |           |          | conjunction; cannot be       |
   |             |           |          | short-circuited: both        |
   |             |           |          | operands are evaluated       |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |  otherwise  | statement |    any   | short-circuited failure      |
   |             |           |          | detection: the right         |
   |             |           |          | expression is evaluated only |
   |             |           |          | if the left expression       |



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   |             |           |          | fails; returns the value of  |
   |             |           |          | the last expression          |
   |             |           |          | evaluated                    |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      -      |   number  |  number  | arithmetic difference        |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      +      |   number  |  number  | arithmetic sum               |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      +      |   string  |  string  | concatenation                |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      *      |   number  |  number  | arithmetic product           |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      /      |   number  |  number  | arithmetic ratio; rounded to |
   |             |           |          | the closest integer (XXX?)   |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      %      |   number  |  number  | arithmetic modulo            |
   |             |           |          |                              |
   |      .      |    name   |  object  | object member access; fails  |
   |             |           |  member  | if the object produced by    |
   |             |           |          | expression on the right does |
   |             |           |          | not have the member named by |
   |             |           |          | the expression on the left.  |
   +-------------+-----------+----------+------------------------------+

   A function call is an n-ary operator. Besides the function name, it
   takes zero or more actual parameters as operands.

   All string operators described above are case-sensitive and come with
   the corresponding case-insensitive operators: EqualS, ContainS,
   Begins_witH, and Ends_witH (XXX: bad idea to name using case?) (XXX:
   should we force programmers to pick the right variant instead of
   providing efficient, but usually wrong default: contains_s and
   contains_i?)

   Operator precedence defines natural evaluation order used in
   mathematics and many programming languages. In the following list,
   operators are ordered based on their precedence. Operators with
   smaller precedence index are evaluated first. Operators with the same
   precedence index are evaluated in the left-to-right order of
   occurrence in an expression.

   1.   .

   2.   ()

   3.   not

   4.   * /



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   5.   + -

   6.   all binary operators on string: equals, contains, ...

   7.   import

   8.   == != < <= > >=

   9.   and

   10.  or

   11.  xor (XXX: misplaced?)

   12.  try (XXX: misplaced?)

   13.  otherwise


3.4 Expressions

   P expressions are used in if-statements to specify the condition for
   the if-statement body to be interpreted.

        if (Http.request.method == "GET" and time.current() > time.noon) {
                ...
        }

                                Figure 6

   Evaluation of an expression stops when the value of an expression is
   known and cannot be changed by further evaluation. This
   short-circuiting optimization technique is common to many programming
   languages. In the following example, the value of A will never be
   interpreted when C is interpreted, regardless of the context where C
   is used:

        C := false and A;
        if (C) { ... };
        if (!C) { ... };
        ...

                                Figure 7


3.5 Statements

   Objects are manipulated using if-statements and function-calls.



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        if (Http.request.method == "GET") {
                Services.applyOne(serviceFoo);
        }

                                Figure 8


3.6 Assignments

   Most procedural programming languages use variables to store
   intermediate processing results. In such languages, a variable is
   essentially a named piece of memory that can be assigned a value and
   can be updated with new values as needed. P does not have such
   variables. Instead, P uses a "single assignment" approach: an
   expression can be tagged with a name and that name can be reused many
   times in the program. On the surface, this is equivalent to having
   all "traditional" variables declared as "constant". The following two
   if-statements are semantically equivalent in P:

        if (Http.request.headers.have(Http.makeHeader("Client-IP"))) {...}

        h := Http.makeHeader("Client-IP");
        hs := Http.request.headers();
        if (hs.have(h)) {...}

                                Figure 9

   If the expression changes, a new name must be used to tag the new
   expression. After an assignment statement, the value of the name is
   not the value of the expression, but the expression itself.  Thus,
   the following two code fragments are equivalent and make no sense in
   P (the first fragment would make sense in languages such as C++):

        h := Http.makeHeader("Client-IP");
        h := Http.makeHeader("Server-IP");

        h := Http.makeHeader("Client-IP");
        Http.makeHeader("Client-IP") := Http.makeHeader("Server-IP");

                               Figure 10

   The interpreter can but does not have to evaluate the expression
   named in the assignment statement until the name is actually used in
   an expression that requires evaluation (e.g., as a parameter of a
   function call statement). This allows for optional performance
   optimizations where only used expressions are evaluated.

   P does not have user-defined functions. However, some code reuse is



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   possible because P code is a valid expression and, hence, can be
   named and reused:

        code := { ... complicated service action ... };
        if (condition1) { code; };
        ...
        if (condition2) { code; };

                               Figure 11

   XXX: document whether expression has to be evaluated in the
   assignment context or use context.

   Names introduced using assignments have global scope. Global scope
   makes it possible to select among alternative values without
   user-defined functions or true variables:

        if (condition) {
                /* no "service" name exists at this point */
                service := Services.findOne(uri1);
        } else {
                /* no "service" name exists at this point */
                service := Services.findOne(uri2);
                service.authorization(myAuth);
        }
        Services.applyOne(service); /* service name is still visible */

                               Figure 12























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4. Modules

   Application-specific support is available in P via modules. Module is
   an object. Interpreters MUST supply two modules named Core and
   Services. The Core module contains members for manipulating built-in
   P object types such as integers and strings. The Services module
   manages OPES services. Application specific modules can be loaded
   into the namespace of a P program via the import operator (see
   Section 3.3). For example, the following P code imports an HTTP
   module, names the result (the module itself) "Http", and checks for
   the presence of a certain HTTP message header:

        Http := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/HTTP";
        if (Http.message.headers.have("Accept")) { ... }

                               Figure 13

   It is not possible to import a Core or Services module explicitly.
   Instead, interpreters MUST provide access to Core and Services
   members as if those modules were imported just before the program
   text.

   Modules are identified by their URIs [RFC2396]. A module
   specification SHOULD contain a globally unique URI for that module.
   Module URIs are usually not used to fetch module implementation
   remotely, but to identify a suitable local copy of a module; they are
   identifiers, not locators. Interpreters maintain a directory of
   known-to-them module URIs. When a module needs to be imported, the
   interpreter checks internal metadata and loads the requested module
   using module-specific interface. If the module is not known or
   loading fails, the import operator fails and the failure is
   propagated using standard failure propagation rules (see Section 6).
   The following example attempts to import one of the SMTP modules.

        /* load one of the available SMTP modules */
        Smtp := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/SMTP" otherwise
                import "http://examle.org/opes/optimized/SMTPv3";

                               Figure 14

   Import operation has program scope. It is not possible to "unload" an
   imported module.

        {
                M := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/HTTP";
                ...
        }
        /* M and M members are still visible here */



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        if (M.connection.is_persistent()) { ... }

                               Figure 15


4.1 Interpreter-module interface

   Most modules are not written in P since the language lacks native
   mechanisms for defining module or function interface. Most modules
   are tightly integrated with OPES processors because application
   adaptation requires access to processor's internal state. For
   example, an HTTP intermediary implemented in C++ can use modules
   written in C++ and may require that implementors inherit their
   modules from a given C++ class.  Such modules may be loaded using,
   for example, a "dynamically loadable module" mechanism supported by
   most modern operating systems. Similarly, a Java OPES processor may
   require that all modules implement a given Java interface and use
   Java importing mechanism. This specification does not document any
   specific interface between an interpreter and third-party modules.

   Nevertheless, an interpreter MAY support loading of modules written
   in P (similar to C++ #include directives). The interface for
   distinguishing URIs of P programs from integrated modules is
   implementation-dependent and is not described here.  For example, an
   interpreter may assume that all unknown module URIs correspond to raw
   P programs and attempt to include such a program if the URI scheme is
   known to the interpreter:

        MyLibrary := import "file://usr/local/lib/globalrules.p";

                               Figure 16


4.2 Modules and namespace

   Members of imported modules belong to the global namespace and are
   directly accessible (visible) without the module name prefix. This
   simple rule may lead to conflicts when two imported modules contain a
   member with the same name. Interpreters MUST fail if any name
   resolution is ambiguous. Interpreters MUST NOT use heuristics to
   guess programmer's intent. Programmers have to use fully qualified
   names to resolve ambiguities.

   For example, all of the import statements below pollute global name
   space, but the first two provide a way for a programmer to resolve
   conflicts, if any:





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        /* import HTTP module */
        Http := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/HTTP";

        /* import SMTP module */
        Smtp := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/SMTP";

        /* import a local file without naming it */
        import "file:///usr/local/globalrules.p";

                               Figure 17

   In the following example, both the Http and Smtp modules have the
   same member named "message", and the code leads to an ambiguity, even
   though Smtp module's message does not have a "method" member:

        Smtp := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/SMTP";
        Http := import "http://ietf.org/opes/rules/p/HTTP";

        method1 := message.method;      /* error: HTTP or SMTP "message"? */
        method2 := Http.message.method; /* OK: HTTP "message" */

                               Figure 18





























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5. OPES Services

   Services module contains basic attributes and methods for searching
   and executing OPES services:

   Services.findOne(URI): returns a service object that corresponds to
      the specified URI. Fails if no corresponding object exists.

   Services.applyOne(service, ...): applies the specified service to the
      current application message and optionally supplies
      service-specific application parameters. XXX: should parameters
      include the part of the message to be modified or just services
      metadata?

   Here is a service application example for a German to French
   translation service:

        Http := import("Http");
        if (Http.response.language_is("german")) {
                service := Services.findOne("opes://svs/tran/german/french");
                service.toDialect("southern");
                Services.applyOne(service, Http.request.headers);
        }

                               Figure 19

   XXX: explain how failures are propagated and can be handled

   XXX: add Core.interpreter.stop and Core.interpreter.restart methods.






















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6. Failures

   Virtually any P statement may fail: expression denominator may be
   zero, named members may not exist, functions may not support supplied
   parameters, service execution may fail, interpreter may ran out of
   resources during an assignment, etc. A failure immediately stops
   interpretation of the expression that caused it.

   Failure is propagated up the expression and statement stack until the
   stack is empty or an "otherwise" alternative is reached (see Section
   3.3). If the stack is empty, the entire P program interpretation
   terminates with a failure. If an "otherwise" alternative is
   encountered, the failure is forgotten and interpretation resumes with
   that alternative.

   Failure propagation rules allow to catch failures, similar to an
   exception mechanisms in languages like C++ or Java, except that P
   exceptions are not objects (they carry no information). For example,
   here is a simple way to introduce a backup/failover service:

        {
                ...
                Services.applyOne(unsafeService);
        } otherwise {
                ...
                Services.applyOne(failoverService);
        };

                               Figure 20

   The "otherwise" operator makes it simple to select among
   failure-prone alternatives:

        service := findOne(uri1) otherwise findOne(uri2);

                               Figure 21

   The following example illustrates how a failure-prone service can be
   retried twice if needed:

        code := {
                /* code executing the service */
        };
        try code otherwise try code otherwise try code;

                               Figure 22

   It is possible to force the interpreter to fail using the



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   "Core.interpreter.fail(reason)" call. This is handy when there is a
   logical failure that the interpreter cannot detect on its own:

        {
                /* large piece of code executing several services,
                   each manipulating the current HTTP message ... */

                /* checkpoint */
                if (!Http.message.headers.have("Content-Length")) {
                        Core.interpreter.fail("services did not set CL");
                }

                /* OK, continue message manipulation ... */
        } otherwise {
                /* recover from failure ... */
        }

                               Figure 23

   This specification has no failure reporting requirements.  The extent
   and form of failure reporting depends on the environment: Developer
   environments would benefit from extensive and detailed reporting of
   failures. Stand-alone intermediaries processing P instructions may
   benefit from some reporting, appropriately implemented not to bring
   down the proxy due to high volume of failures. User environments,
   especially mobile and similarly resource-constraint applications
   should probably conserve scarce resources and produce no reports by
   default.























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7. Security Considerations

   XXX: document non-obvious vulnerabilities: too many names, too deep
   nesting, invalid math, too much error logging; execution of
   unauthorized services, unauthorized exposure of sensitive information
   to authorized services.













































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8. Compliance

   XXX: define what a compliant interpreter is.
















































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Appendix A. Examples

   This appendix contains half-baked examples to illustrate P usage in
   common OPES environments. Example themes are taken from
   [I-D.beck-opes-irml] to ease the comparison with IRML.

   Here is a data provider example:

        interpreter.languageVersion("1.0"); // fails if incompatible

        Http := import("Http");
        lookup(Http);

        // Is the requested web document our home page?
        isHome := request.uri.looksLikeHome();

        // Does the user send us a specific cookie?
        cookie := makeHeader("Cookie", "sew=23");
        haveCookie := request.headers.have(cookie);

        if (isHome and haveCookie) {
                Services := import("Services");
                service := Services.findOne("opes://local.net/add-lcl-content");
                service.clientIp(request.clientIp);
                Services.applyOne(service);
        }

                               Figure 24

   Here is a data consumer example:

        Services := import("Services");
        service := Services.findOne("opes://privacy.net/priv-serv");
        service.action("remove-referer");
        Services.applyOne(service);

                               Figure 25














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Appendix B. To-do

   i18n: What are IETF and real-world internationalization requirements
      for languages?  Can we say that everything is Unicode UTF-8 and be
      done with it? Does UTF have a notion of space characters like
      ASCII does? If not, how can we separate grammar tokens without
      requiring them to be ASCII?

   namespaces: Module lookup facility leads to potential conflicts among
      identical names from different modules. What is the best way to
      resolve these conflicts? How other languages do it?

   security: Write Security Considerations section.  A lot can be moved
      from the IRML security section. Some can be borrowed from OCP
      Core.

   module URI: Is there an IETF document that tells us how to assign/
      manage URIs for new "things" like modules? For example, do we use
      http://ietf.org/opes/http for HTTP module? Or do we use iana.org
      domain name instead?  Is http:// a good choice for the scheme or
      should we use opes:// or even p://?!. Do we use de-facto file://
      for local filenames from where raw P code can be included
      directly? Note that modules like HTTP are not written in P!

   examples: Add more simple but realistic and illustrative examples:
      HTTP header anonymization, OPES/HTTP trace entry management (e.g.,
      removing trace entries of a given OPES service), removing a virus
      attachment from an SMTP message. Ask filtering/ICAP people to
      supply use cases.

   interpreter API: Document that we do not document interpreter API --
      how, for example, an implemented HTTP module is actually "loaded".
      Mention that the solution would depend on the interpreter
      implementation and the same HTTP module is unlikely to be
      compatible with different interpreters.

   define interpreter: Add terminology section. Define interpreter to
      mean compiler, or run-time interpreter, or bytecode generator, or
      anything of that kind.

   op keywords: Document that operator names (via identifier BNF entry)
      are not keywords: object members can use identifiers that clash
      with operator names since there can be no ambiguity.

   statement value: Document values of all statements (e.g.,
      compound-statement value is the value of the last statement in a
      compound)?




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   RE: Decide whether we should support regular expression matching
      natively.

   if-else-if: Make if-else-if syntax compact.

   str ==: Remove "==" for strings in examples. There is no such
      operator for strings anymore.












































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Appendix C. Acknowledgments

   The authors gratefully acknowledge contributions of:  Anwar M. Haneef
   (Motorola) and Geetha Manjunath (Hewlett Packard).















































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Appendix D. Change Log

   Internal WG revision control IDs: $RCSfile: rules-lang.xml,v $
   $Revision: 1.23 $.

   2003/10/08

      *  Added (expression) expression to BNF.

   2003/09/22

      *  Added missing concatenation operator for strings.

   2003/09/21

      *  Explained undocumented relationship between interpreters and
         third-party modules.

   2003/09/19

      *  Simplified module importing and lookup facilities.  Import is
         now a built-in operator and not a Core method.  Explicit lookup
         control is gone in favor of always-lookup default.

   2003/09/18

      *  Completed syntax BNF except for escape sequences.

      *  Distinguish interpretation failure from boolean false: use
         "otherwise" and "or" operators respectively. With just "or" it
         was impossible to say whether, say, "h.has(foo)" failed or "h"
         just does not have "foo".

      *  Use Perl semantics for "otherwise" -- return the value of last
         evaluated expression, not true/false.

      *  Nearly completed a set of supported operators, including
         operators for strings.

      *  Operators should only be supported for built-in objects because
         it is difficult to define how "5 + object" is interpreted
         without running into problems with "object + object" ("object +
         5" is easy but we need symmetry). It is unlikely that we are
         losing much with this limitation anyway -- protocol objects
         would rarely have good semantics for operators.

      *  Defined scope rules for new names introduced by assignments.




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      *  Added Acknowledgments section.


















































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Normative References

   [RFC2234]  Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.

   [RFC2396]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
              August 1998.

   [I-D.ietf-opes-architecture]
              Barbir, A., "An Architecture for Open Pluggable Edge
              Services (OPES)", draft-ietf-opes-architecture-04 (work in
              progress), December 2002.






































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Informative References

   [RFC2616]  Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Nielsen, H.,
              Masinter, L., Leach, P. and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext
              Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.

   [I-D.beck-opes-irml]
              Beck, A. and M. Hofmann, "IRML: A Rule Specification
              Language for Intermediary Services",
              draft-beck-opes-irml-03 (work in progress), June 2003.


Authors' Addresses

   Andre Beck
   Lucent Technologies
   101 Crawfords Corner Rd.
   Holmdel, NJ
   US

   Phone: +1 732 332-5983
   EMail: abeck@bell-labs.com


   Alex Rousskov
   The Measurement Factory

   EMail: rousskov@measurement-factory.com
   URI:   http://www.measurement-factory.com/






















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   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
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