Re: Background, requirements and use cases

On Wed, 25 May 2005, Mark Nottingham wrote:

> * Tarawa - http://www.mnot.net/tarawa/
> This is an early version of an API that maps Web resources directly to 
> objects; i.e., HTTP methods map to methods on the object, the object has a 
> 'children' property which contains a dictionary of resource names and 
> Resource instances. This approach to HTTP brings some specific requirements, 
> such as being able to easily figure out the resource hierarchy.

Jigsaw [1] also maps Web resources to objects, however it add an 
abstraction between the resource itself and how it is served.
A file a FileResource that has limited characteristics, and it can be 
"exported" via a Web server as a Web resource by adding a HTTP protocol 
frame, to create an HTTP view of that file.
Its internal description format is all in XML, with a set of rules to 
automatically create resources.
In Tarawa, conneg is done via a specific resource, same in Jigsaw (this 
gives the added bonus to do the negotiation between arbitrary resources, 
without restricting the URI space).

This gives a description format (very raw, as it is quite old now) to do a 
mapping between different kind of objects and their external 
representation, not a description of this external representation.

Mark, expect the discussion to reach the topic of OPTIONS at some point ;)

[1] http://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/

-- 
Yves Lafon - W3C
"Baroula que barouleras, au tiéu toujou t'entourneras."