how do the two software status fields work?

Question

How are the software.installStatus and software.activeStatus supposed to behave during the various software actions (install, uninstall, activate & deactivate)?

There's absolutely no discussion of these fields in the spec, that I can see, and there's no indication of what values they should have, or when those values should change.

Answer 1

You are right, in previous releases of the spec these attributes have been neglected. However in the new R4 specs of TS-0001 (currently 4.9) and with the introduction of the <softwareCampaign> resource type a better description is written in clause 10.2.28 "Software Management":

If the softwareOperation attribute has a value of INSTALL or UNINSTALL, the Hosting CSE shall accordingly set the install or uninstall attribute to TRUE for each [software] specialization linked through the softwareLinks attribute. When the Hosting CSE receives a notification that the installStatus attribute of a [software] specialization has been updated to a value of installed or uninstalled, the Hosting CSE shall update the corresponding entry in the individualSoftwareStatus attribute to a value of INSTALLED or UNINSTALLED, accordingly. When the Hosting CSE detects that the installStatus attribute of all the [software] specializations have been updated to installed or uninstalled, the Hosting CSE shall update the aggregatedSoftwareStatus attribute to INSTALLED or UNINSTALLED, accordingly.

If the softwareOperation attribute has a value of ACTIVATE or DEACTIVATE, the Hosting CSE shall accordingly set the activate or deactivate attribute to TRUE for each [software] specialization linked through the softwareLinks attribute. When the Hosting CSE receives a notification that the activeStatus attribute of a [software] specialization has been updated to a value of activated or deactivated, the Hosting CSE shall update the corresponding entry in the individualSoftwareStatus attribute to a value of ACTIVATED or DEACTIVATED, accordingly. When the Hosting CSE detects that the activeStatus attribute of all [software] specializations have been updated to a value of activated or deactivated, the Hosting CSE shall update the aggregatedSoftwareStatus attribute to ACTIVATED or DEACTIVATED, accordingly.