Notification period inheritance problem

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/15/2009 11:03 PM, Martin Melin wrote:
> I don't understand why this is confusing.
>    
...
> By setting "notification_period null" in your service definition, you
> are explicitly overriding all forms of inheritance and setting the
> notification_period to null, which happens to be a special
> notification_period.
>    

Is that so?  What does the special value do?  In all of the 
documentation, I only see "null" mentioned once.  In a section labeled 
"Cancelling Inheritance of String Values".  The documentation indicates 
that "null" can be used to prevent inheriting a value.  Neither of those 
things say to me, the user, that "null" is a special notification period.

> So, the issue you are running into is due to you expecting implied
> inheritance to take precedence over values defined in the service
> definition itself.

Only where the value is "null", which is documented only to prevent the 
inheritance of a value.

> This would break the documented and expected
> behavior of inheritance, and a lot of people's configurations.
>    

I'm sure that when you tell me what the "null" notification period does, 
I'll understand how.  For now, I don't, because it doesn't seem to be 
documented.

> Something that might work, but unfortunately I can't try it as I've
> already spent too much time on this email :-), is to set
> notification_period to null in the template, which could mean that the
> service definition will behave as though the notification_period value
> is unset in the template. This would allow you to let the "null
> notification period" template inherit from your normal template.
>    

I'm not sure if you read my original email, but that's EXACTLY what I 
did.  Tell me again how you don't understand why this is confusing.

Snark aside, I appreciate the help and discussion.  However, looking at 
the documentation again only convinces me more that the documentation 
and the code don't match up.  Your confusion, too, lends credence to my 
position, IMO.

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