Re: What is the correct media-type for a Hydra specification?

Dear all,

> i am guessing it's two worlds colliding. the REST community typically likes specific media types, so that resources explicitly surface the models that they represent. it makes resources self-describing *through their media type*.
> 
> RDF, on the other hand, typically only exposes its metamodel and uses the media type for serialization variants, assuming that saying "it's RDF" is good enough. this makes resources self-describing *once you process them*.

I couldn't agree more with the above.

I think it's very important that for all of the specifications in the Hydra Community Group
that are meant to create specific documents,
which is currently the Hydra Core Vocabulary and Triple Pattern Fragments,
we do _not_ define new MIME types.
RDF already has several MIME types, one for each concrete syntax, and that's enough.

RDF documents are self-describing so there is no need.
Additionally, specific MIME types corrupt the goal of Hydra:
it seems a contradiction that generic clients need specific document types.
The Hydra Core Vocabulary provides generic hypermedia controls;
we don't see specific media types for different HTML documents either.

Note that this is explicitly mentioned in the TPF spec:

>> The server must, however, support at least one RDF-based representation.
>> Servers must indicate the corresponding MIME type when responding
>> with a Triple Pattern Fragment, so clients can correctly parse it.

— http://www.hydra-cg.com/spec/latest/triple-pattern-fragments/#definition

So no specific document types.

I like the idea of profiles however; would be good to have those.
To what extent is https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6906 sufficiently mature?

Best,

Ruben

Received on Tuesday, 14 April 2015 08:00:44 UTC