[Rats] Entity vs. role

["Smith, Ned" <[e-mail]>]

(not as chair)
One of the topics discussed during RATS113 session I seemed to focus on architectural considerations for entities vs. roles. The architecture draft summarizes concisely:
“In essence, an entity that combines more than one role creates and consumes the corresponding conceptual messages as defined in this document.”

This is different from a distributed Verifier that operates on a portion of a conceptual message and (possibly) forwards a portion for some other Verifier to consume. The architecture didn’t attempt to name partially processed conceptual messages distributed across multiple entities.

It may be helpful for drafts to give names to partially processed conceptual messages, but until processing is complete (and therefore becomes a different conceptual message) it should still be correct to refer to the partially processed conceptual message by it’s architectural name (e.g., Evidence that has been authenticated but not appraised would still be regarded as Evidence architecturally. Appraisal results that haven’t been authenticated to a Verifier might still be called Evidence up until all the requirements for being called Attestation Results are satisfied.)

-Ned