* Inconsistent with other flows. We do not normally update status fields to perform actions. For example to run a VM, we do not update it's status to 'activated', we run an action (start).
I think this point is the crux of the matter. IMO the consistency between activation implemented as direct state manipulation versus the state change occurring as a side-effect of an action, would be a deal-breaker. IIRC one of the reasons we avoided that kind of direct state manipulation first time round is that it doesn't lend itself to multi-state transitions, e.g. activation that traversed multiple intermediate states, say: quiescent->pending->activating->activated That example is a bit contrived and unrealistic, but in any case the principal is that the client-visible state machine for a resource may not necessarily transition directly from the initial to the terminal state. Also an action as opposed to a direct state manipulation makes it more natural to express side-effects of the activation, and to implement in-progress status querying or cancelation. For those reasons, I'm thinking that using actions consistently accross the board is better than exposing an action in one case while allowing a direct state manipulation in another. So my vote would be for option #2. Cheers, Eoghan