RA and the TAG

Ashok and I have been discussing some of the historical comments and opinions expressed by the TAG concerning Transfer.  Some of the more interesting comments are included below.

There seem to be at least 2 issues:

- Web Services are identified by EPRs and not by URI's.

- A RESTful interface is desirable i.e. what does a GET on the URI in the EPR return?.



It would be good to discuss this during the F2F.  Ashok could talk about the current trends on

fetching metadata and we can discuss whether this is a direction the WG wants to pursue.



In the end it would be best to draw out any specific TAG issues sooner rather than later.

Cheers,

Geoff





Details:



1)

http://www.w3.org/2008/11/06-tagmem-irc

Reconstructing the meeting notes a bit, we get:

"WS-Transfer resources are potentially identified by more than just a URI, making them unsuitable for referencing and use in other Web technologies, e.g. in the context of traditional Web links or RDF assertions. Also, there is a risk, depending how WS-Transfer operates over HTTP, that WS-Transfer might not benefit from existing deployed infrastructure such as proxies."



These comments seem to open up a number of potential issues that the TAG may raise associated with Transfer (and perhaps Eventing?).



2)

http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2006/12/12-tagmem-minutes.html

Quotes such as:

"I would be much happier if we can do a better job of getting the community that's using EPRs, etc. to take to heart the value of integration with the Web."



"PlH: But WS is not entirely against REST, it's just that the toolkits don't typically exploit a RESTful foundation

DO: But adding WS Transfer in a way would enable more RESTful WS -- after all, REST is not dependent on http, you can have a RESTful use of SOAP over UDP"



"The fact that the WS Transfer example breaks the Addressing agreement can be fixed"



It is generally a long discussion about Web Services and the Web Architecture.  Again a number of issues raised here, mainly about using EPRs.  One specific issue raised was about changing the examples in Transfer (and other specs?) to NOT use resource parameters.



3)

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2006Oct/0061.html

Several very good questions are raised here:

* Does WS-Transfer's use of Web Services Addressing End Point References (EPRs) instead of URIs damage the Web?

* When WS-Transfer is carried over HTTP, can it make proper use of HTTP as an application level-protocol? Should a default HTTP binding be specified to promote proper use of the WS-Transfer/SOAP/HTTP combination?



These issues seem to be similar to those raised in 1) above.



4)

Thus far, TAG has only focused on Transfer. RT was published in Fall 2006. If WS-Transfer's use of EPRs on Web Services Resources instead of URIs are thought to be damaging the Web then WS-ResourceTransfer's use of EPRs on Secondary Resources would certainly amplify those damages. Perhaps the WG should specifically ask the TAG to review WS-ResourceTranfer and provide their input as well?