Fwd: RE: [DWBP + SDW: API] Related Best Practice

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-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: RE: [DWBP + SDW: API] Related Best Practice
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 08:34:05 +0000
From: Linda van den Brink <l.vandenbrink@geonovum.nl>
To: Ig Ibert Bittencourt <ig.ibert@gmail.com>, jeremy.tandy@gmail.com 
<jeremy.tandy@gmail.com>, p.barnaghi@surrey.ac.uk 
<p.barnaghi@surrey.ac.uk>, Bernadette Farias Loscio <bfl@cin.ufpe.br>, 
Caroline Burle <cburle@nic.br>, Newton Calegari <newton@nic.br>, Phil 
Archer <phila@w3.org>

One link I forgot to supply with my answer, about API documentation and 
time to first successful call: 
https://github.com/geo4web-testbed/topic3/wiki/Developer-Experience

Van: Linda van den Brink
Verzonden: dinsdag 29 maart 2016 10:30
Aan: 'Ig Ibert Bittencourt'; jeremy.tandy@gmail.com; 
p.barnaghi@surrey.ac.uk; Bernadette Farias Loscio; Caroline Burle; 
Newton Calegari; Phil Archer
Onderwerp: RE: [DWBP + SDW: API] Related Best Practice

Dear all,

I think that indeed DWBP 26 and SDWBP 29 could be merged. I reviewed 
DWBP 26 and compared it to SDWBP 29. I think that SDWBP 29 might even be 
completely removed from the SDWBP, as there are no special spatial 
aspects in it (some examples aside), and DWBP 26 describes the issue 
sufficiently. However in SDWBP 29, there is currently a little more 
detail you could consider adding to DWBP 26. What I’m missing is:

-          API documentation should describe the data(set) it exposes

-          We recommend providing machine readable API documentation 
that can be used by software development tools to help developers build 
API client software. (or is that what you mean by self-documenting?)

-          Where a parameter domain is bound to a set of values (e.g. 
value range, spatial or temporal extent, controlled vocabulary etc.), 
the API documentation or the API itself should indicate the set of 
values that may be used in order to help users request data that is 
actually available.

An extra thing you could add, if you want, is a statement I learned from 
one of the participants of a testbed on data on the web we recently 
held. He said that a good measure for knowing if an API is 
well-documented is ‘the time to first successful call’.

I hope this helps, my fellow SDW editors might also want to respond.

Linda

Van: Ig Ibert Bittencourt [mailto:ig.ibert@gmail.com]
Verzonden: maandag 28 maart 2016 18:07
Aan: jeremy.tandy@gmail.com<mailto:jeremy.tandy@gmail.com>; 
p.barnaghi@surrey.ac.uk<mailto:p.barnaghi@surrey.ac.uk>; Linda van den 
Brink; Bernadette Farias Loscio; Caroline Burle; Newton Calegari; Phil 
Archer
Onderwerp: [DWBP + SDW: API] Related Best Practice

Dear Editors of the Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices Document,

My name is Ig Bittencourt and I am a member of the W3C Data on the Web 
Working Group. Two weeks ago we had our final F2F meeting and we 
discussed about our BP Doc [1]. In one of the discussions, we realized 
that SDW:BP 29 [2] is very related to DWBP:BP 26.

Both BPs are related to documenting APIs. However, in SDW:BP 29, there 
is a special atention on the self-description of APIs. However, if you 
look at the intended outcome of DWBP:BP 26, we discuss a little about it.

For this reason, we started to wonder if these BPs could be merged. 
Please, let us know what do you think about this possibility.

All the very best,

[1] http://w3c.github.io/dwbp/bp.html
[2] http://w3c.github.io/sdw/bp/#self-describing-apis
[3] http://w3c.github.io/dwbp/bp.html#documentYourAPI


Ig Ibert Bittencourt
Professor Adjunto III - Instituto de Computação/Universidade Federal de 
Alagoas (UFAL)
Vice-Coordenador da Comissão Especial de Informática na Educação
Líder do Centro de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais
Co-fundador da Startup MeuTutor Soluções Educacionais LTDA.

Received on Tuesday, 29 March 2016 08:55:35 UTC