Major Description
The partial ordering of Axis2 handlers is not fully enforced.
Given a case with two handlers that ought to be run before a third, the system may fail as implemented.
The current ordering system permits a configuration which is valid by inspection yet fails to enforce the described order. This property of the system emerges from both the configuration and the time at which phase ordering is checked.
If my system relies on both A and B coming before C, I cannot state this dependency directly (see AXIS2-5266). However, I can invert this dependency and say A and B require C to follow.
Because phase rules are only checked at insertion time, if A and B are inserted first, they are merely shifted to the beginning of the phase list (C is not yet present). The resultant phase list after the insertion of A and B might be: (B,A,X,Y,Z).
If C specifies that B comes before it in its rule (which is a valid, albeit incomplete requirement), then C might be inserted immediately after B, resulting in this invalid phase ordering: (B,C,A,X,Y,Z).
This example of valid configuration yielding invalid phase ordering constitutes a defect in the configuration.
This defect could resolved by allowing the specification of multiple "before" and "after" handlers (see AXIS2-5266), creating a dependency graph, and resolving a valid ordering from the graph. A dependency graph may also generalize many of the validation steps currently performed into a cycle detection step. (Even phasefirst and phaselast rules amount to cycle detection if they are properly represented in the graph.) A dependency graph would also allow for confirmation that all dependencies are in place before a service is started.
I believe this change would make the system more robust, and because the dependencies would be resolved in a linear chain at service startup, there's no ongoing performance penalty for creating/maintaining a more complex data structure.