RE: Aggregate Attributes

["Durham, David" <david.durham@intel.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel M. Halpern [mailto:joel@longsys.com]
> 
> I don't know if this is Randy's problem, but I have noticed that 
> non-divisibility is being used by some people interchangeably with 
> atomicity.  I think that these are two different concepts.
> 
> 1) Non-divisibility to me means that if I define an attribute 
> group A bade 
> up of attributes A1, A2, & A3 I can not declare that 
> attriubte group B 
> contains attribute group A, but only contains A1 and A2.  If 
> I want to 
> include A, I include A1, A2, and A3.  This is a sensible and 
> useful property.

[Dave] And this was my interpretation as well.

> 2) Atomicity would mean that if I have something defined as having 
> attribute group A, any time I wanted to reference it (get, 
> set, ...) I 
> would have to reference the entire group and not its parts.  
> This seems to 
> me to be a very different, much more protocol oriented 
> concept.  It also 
> happens to be one I disagree with strongly.  If by atomicity we mean 
> something different from this, then I would appreciate some betrer 
> definitions of terms.

[Dave] I searched the accepted objectives section for the word "atomicity"
or any word starting with "atom" and found none. So it doesn't seem to be
mentioned... Are you suggesting that explicit text should be added saying
atomic access is not what 4.1.28 means?