Re: ldp-ISSUE-59 (recursive-delete): Reconsider usage of Aggregate/Composite construct to get predictable container delete behavior [Linked Data Platform core]

On 20/03/13 12:34, Steve Speicher wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Wilde, Erik <Erik.Wilde@emc.com> wrote:
>> hello steve.
>>
>> On 2013-03-19 7:51 , "Steve Speicher" <sspeiche@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> This is not in line with what I was proposing, a regular-DELETE would
>>> remove just the container (both the triples of members and
>>> non-members).  In the case of recursive-DELETE, it would do the same
>>> as regular-DELETE and issue a recursive-DELETE on each container
>>> member object URL.
>>
>> if it works this way, aren't you intentionally orphaning all members and
>> they will become undiscoverable once you have DELETEd the container around
>> them? while this is not violating REST, it is not a very useful pattern,
>> because it means that all these resources essentially become "Zombies in
>> RESTland" once you have deleted the container.
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> dret.
>>
>
> One thing I'm not hearing is feedback on part a), is this an
> improvement or not?  Or are you saying, until we have a clear
> direction for b) then you can answer a)?
>
> You might be orphaning but why is that a big problem?  The client
> knows it is doing this by knowing what DELETE does, if it cares about
> the links it should keep a reference to them or not do the DELETE.  A
> server could run some cleanup tasks to remove orphan resources, if it
> thinks it is a problem, or place them in some server-managed special
> container say called "orphans" (application-specific behavior).  I
> would not refer to them as orphans or zombies, it is quite possible
> that an external application is holding a reference to that member
> resource and therefore it is not orphaned in the web sense...just the
> managing server doesn't have a client requested container to leave it
> in.

I agree - links (bookmarks) are important.  Clients don't always start 
at the home page.

+1 to DELETE is delete-of-container in LDP-V1.

A separate facility ("?recurse", recursive delete URL, (both are 
separate operations somewhere else), or even leave as implementation 
matter for V1.

	Andy

>
> --
> - Steve Speicher
>

Received on Thursday, 21 March 2013 19:29:18 UTC