Re: Representative sample of industry protocols

Hi Ben,



I am hearing strong agreement about the value of HTTP as a very popular Internet protocol, but not so much about the impact of different application domain requirements on the communication patterns. HTTP itself can be used in many different ways, and this can lead to interoperability challenges. It thus makes sense to identify design patterns for common sets of requirements based upon an agreed set of use cases. We can then define the metadata vocabulary for declaring how a particular platform is using the protocol, as a means to enable interoperability. The Interest Group has already done quite a bit of work on this, albeit on a restricted set of use cases.

Whilst we can prioritize work on HTTP, we shouldn’t preclude work on other protocols, as according to the level of interest amongst the group participants. The Interest Group, for instance, has worked on CoAP. 

In respect to WebSockets, people tend to roll their own (proprietary) protocol using JSON messages. Interoperability would require work on standards for these messages. This seems like something that needs further incubation to ensure the appropriate level of critical review.

p.s. this is of course just my personal opinion.

—
   Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org <mailto:dsr@w3.org>>