Re: Is it a good idea to make your WADL available?

On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Mark Nottingham wrote:
>
> 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).
>
I think you should leave it up to clients to decide how they choose  
to use the information you provide. Not providing a WADL in order to  
protect clients from themselves seems a little self defeating - you  
have to provide information in some form to make your service  
useable. Just providing an XSD for the XML documents your service  
uses is enough information for someone to come up with some very  
tightly coupled client code.

Provided you clearly spell out the expectations in terms of  
longevity, versioning policy etc, I see little harm in providing a  
public description of your service.

Marc.

---
Marc Hadley <marc.hadley at sun.com>
Business Alliances, CTO Office, Sun Microsystems.