Re: Discovering service descriptions

Comments below

>> Of the remaining options, 1 - HTTP Header and 7 - Conneg both are
>> "protocol-level" operations. They each seem to be somewhat specific to
>> HTTP, though I'm guessing there'd be a moral equivalent for things like
>> SOAP. They definitely lend themselves easily enough to equivalents via
>> an API (myEngine.getServiceDescription() ? :-) ).
>> 
>> The other options, DESCRIBE <endpoint> and DESCRIBE_ENDPOINT, are
>> "query-level" operations. Some people have expressed concerns that
>> DESCRIBE <endpoint> (or its cousin, DESCRIBE <>) constrains what
>> information the store can actually contain, and it also seems to me that
>> it requires that the endpoint actually have a URI in the first place,

Isn't this a reasonable assumption.

>> and that the caller know that URI (not necessarily the case in an API
>> environment, though there are non-standard ways to get at service
>> descriptions in those cases, as above, I guess).

I think allocating a URI to the endpoint and using it for things such as
discovery (even within a query) is a good practice even in an API
environment.  It also *feels* very intuitive

-- Chimezie


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Received on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 13:46:42 UTC