Code generation or forms?

On Wed, Jun 01, 2005 at 04:29:32PM +0200, Marc Hadley wrote:
> In WADL the fault elements are intended to specify an inclusive  
> rather than exclusive list.

Ah, ok.  You might want to say that in the spec. 8-)

So that would no longer break HTTP, which is good.  I'm still not
seeing a whole lot of value there though, but perhaps I'm not
looking hard enough.  Which brings me to ...

> >Another example of this is the use, in most of the description specs
> >I've seen, of XML schema.  For the same reason as above, I generally
> >think it's a bad idea to describe the data produced using a schema
> >since schemas generally (DaveO's excellent extensibility advice
> >notwithstanding) change foreseeably over time, and I don't want a  
> >change
> >in the schema produced by a service breaking clients if I can help it.
> >Instead, I'm more a fan of simply using a media type as a name for an
> >open-ended sequence of backwards-compatible schemas (think "text/html"
> >vs. HTML 2.0, 3.2, 4.01, etc..), as well as, of course, associating an
> >extensible processing model to that media type to accomodate as many
> >unanticipated extensions as possible over time.
> >
> Paul Downey and I discussed this over a few beers last night. I think  
> there's a tension between providing a loose description that is more  
> open to evolution but less useful in terms of code generation and a  
> description that is tighter but more useful for code generation.

Agreed, but ...

It sounds like the ability to generate code from these descriptions is
an objective for you, right?  As I mentioned, I'm personally interested
in having these descriptions consumed at runtime, since I think that's
far higher value ("more open to evolution", as you say).

Do you think that a single description document could be used both at
runtime and design-time?  Or would it make sense to have two different
documents?  I'm undecided, mostly because I don't understand what it is
that folks want to accomplish with code generation.  I suppose WADL is
a bit of both - have you got any experience using it at both design time
and runtime that you can relay?

Cheers,

Mark.
-- 
Mark Baker.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.          http://www.markbaker.ca
Coactus; Web-inspired integration strategies   http://www.coactus.com

Received on Thursday, 2 June 2005 14:12:06 UTC