Re: [dxwg] Use case: web browser navigation of profile information

I think this use case is extremely important and fully in scope. Our charter tells us to develop guidance in the use of profiles, and if we are going to be suggesting the use of content negotiation, I would suggest that item number one in the list of principles would be to also provide a means of profile discovery without content negotiation. I don't see that as at all at odds with web architecture. Conneg requires that the representations to be served have dereferenceable URIs anyway. We needn't (and IMHO shouldn't) specify the use of query strings.

One of my biggest concerns with profile negotiation is that the content of the underlying resource is different in the representations served by content negotiation. Clients are limited to an automated negotiation even though information to which the user has no access is relevant to the choice. For example, the same dataset distribution served for different profiles may offer more content with a profile that describes more things. The user may want the fuller set of data but would have no means of knowing that it exists. If we assume use only by profile-specific applications, then the application cannot do anything with the alternatives that it is configured not to accept, so the issue goes away. But I can easily imagine applications that are not limited to a single profile or even a short list of them. Even if they use * to accept all possible profiles, they only get one. They may get a list in the reply header, but there is no reasonable way to indicate the differences in content between them. Human consumers won't even get that, unless we address this issue. 

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Received on Thursday, 5 July 2018 21:34:41 UTC