Is it a good idea to make your WADL available?

As I've said before, my primary use cases for WADL (and other desc  
formats) are
   a) as a design-time aid
   b) for documentation generation
   c) for server and intermediary configuration
and possibly also for stub generation on the server side.

Talking to folks about this, I'm starting to wonder if there are  
*any* good use cases for sharing your Web description with clients,  
because doing so risks engendering tight coupling.

The only exception I can think of right now is when you can do some  
client-side optimisation (e.g., having hints about whether the  
service supports chunked/compressed request bodies). However, that  
information can be made available elsewhere (e.g., OPTIONS extensions).

Thoughts?

Of course, we can't stop people from misusing description, but I'd  
like to have the clearest, strongest guidance possible available and  
well-known, so this doesn't lead people down the same path that WS-*  
took (to parrot one concern I've heard).

Cheers,

--
Mark Nottingham
mnot@yahoo-inc.com

Received on Thursday, 31 August 2006 20:03:30 UTC