Re: WebID and Content Negotiation

On 1/27/22 3:57 PM, Martynas Jusevičius wrote:
> I would strongly argue that conneg is not an implementation detail,
> but rather an orthogonal specification, and good specifications follow
> the orthogonality principle:
> https://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#orthogonal-specs
>
> That allows HTTP protocols not having to define conneg in their specs.
> SPARQL 1.1 Protocol refers to conneg with a one-liner:
> https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-protocol/#conneg
> That does not seem to have caused problems like the ones we are discussing here?
>
> However when you try to make some of the media type special, e.g.
> "canonical", you break the orthogonality, and conneg gets pulled into
> the protocol specification. That is a clear architectural anti-pattern
> IMO.


Hi Martynas,

Here's a snippet from your example regarding the SPARQL spec:


        "2.1.5 Accepted Response Formats

Protocol clients*should*use HTTPcontent negotiation 
<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec12.html>[RFC2616 
<https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-protocol/#rfc2616>] to request response 
formats that the client can consume. See below for more on potential 
response formats."

SPARQL is a Query Language, Data Access Protocol, and Structured Data 
Representation combo, and its formal specification isn't about 
unambiguous entity denotation using HTTP URIs :)

The moment you bring content-negotiation in you are opening the same 
can-of-worms opened by content-type specificity (via MUST or other 
techniques).


Kingsley

>
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 9:48 PM Nathan Rixham<nathan@webr3.org>  wrote:
>> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022, 20:12 Kingsley Idehen,<kidehen@openlinksw.com>  wrote:
>>> On 1/27/22 1:18 PM, Jacopo Scazzosi wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Hi Jacopo,
>>>
>>>>> Could we come to a consensus that content negotiation is optional for
>>>>> current and future WebID work?
>>>> I agree that it should remain optional, as per the current WebID spec/draft:
>>>>
>>>> a) conneg tends to be incompatible with hosting of static resources
>>>> b) conneg comes with its own complexity, which should not be forced upon
>>>>      adopters of the spec
>>>
>>> Content Negotiation is an implementation detail that has no business
>>> being in the WebID spec.
>>
>> +1


-- 
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