Hi All; As far as I understood, with current handler order resolution in the Phase (see org.apache.axis2.engine.Phase) the order of Handlers are depended on the order they are added. For an example, if there are handlers A and B and there is a rules in B says B after A, the order is preserved only if B is added after A. if handlers are added B,A then since A does not have rules, it is added to somewhere. AFAIK current code only check rules for the new handler, but does not check rules in the existing Handlers.
I noticed this problem while developing a Handler, and walk though the code also verified it. However, there is a standard way to solve this problem. The solution is creating a graph assigning dependencies as edges in a graph--which is a directed acyclic graph--and then doing a topology sort http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sort . The algorithm takes O(n) time and space where n is number of entities + number of rules, which is pretty reasonable. If people agree, I would like to redo the Handler resolution algorithm in the Phase class with topology sort. Please comment. (Please note I can not commit for a time line, but will do it when I get a free time.) Thanks very much Srinath -- ============================ Srinath Perera: Indiana University, Bloomington http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~hperera/ http://www.bloglines.com/blog/hemapani
