Re: Draft Proposal for Assigning Media Types

It's probably safest to ask Gudge to characterise exactly what we need 
:)

All that I'm saying is that we had what seemed to be a reasonable 
requirement that Schema couldn't fulfil. We should give that 
information to the Schema WG as input to their process.

Regards,

On Mar 10, 2004, at 5:36 PM, Anish Karmarkar wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Are you suggesting that we ask that XML schema support attribute 
> substitution group?
>
> Even if there were a attribute substitution group, that would still be 
> a problem because one of the goals was to have a "standard" attribute 
> in a namespace that would indicate the media type of base64Binary data 
> in a doc instance.
>
> -Anish
> --
>
> Mark Nottingham wrote:
>
>> Based on our discussion in Cannes, I'm not opposed to the outlined 
>> approach. However, I think we (WSDL and XMLP) should raise an issue 
>> with XML Schema regarding the ability to constrain an attribute in 
>> the manner we would have liked to.
>> regards,
>> On Feb 10, 2004, at 11:39 PM, Anish Karmarkar wrote:
>>> Umit Yalcinalp wrote:
>>> >
>>>
>>>> Mark Nottingham wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Umit,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the proposal. A few comments;
>>>>
>>>> Hi Mark,
>>>> I am glad that finally we are moving on. ;-) Thanks for your 
>>>> comments.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> * It seems like there's a lot of SOAP/WSDL/MTOM-specific language 
>>>>> and rationale in this draft. Although I understand this work is 
>>>>> motivated by Web services, it's critical that any mechanism like 
>>>>> this gets the broadest possible adoption, so that Web services 
>>>>> stacks can leverage this information in any XML it comes across, 
>>>>> not just those that have been born (and will die) in a controlled 
>>>>> SOAP message exchange.
>>>>
>>>> That is an interesting point. The note only addresses the 
>>>> declaration of the expected and actual media-type in the schema and 
>>>> since there is no established support for media types in the 
>>>> schema. The motivation, however, is definitely coming from Web 
>>>> Services angle, wouldn't you agree?  We are jointly working towards 
>>>> publishing this note as WSD and XMLP wgs. Hence, I see that it is 
>>>> only natural that we indicate why we decided to do this and use our 
>>>> starting points as references. If you would like to suggest 
>>>> additional points to be added, would you please send them.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think we need to achieve a careful balance here. It would be good 
>>> to make the mechanism generic enough that non-Web services related 
>>> XML technologies can leverage/utilize this if they chooses to do so. 
>>> I think the proposal achieves that. It would be good to call that 
>>> out. But I don't think we should go too far and say that this is 
>>> *the* mechanism for representing media-types for all XML 
>>> technologies (not sure if that is what you meant).
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> * Some rationale needs to be given as to why only media types, 
>>>>> instead of content types, are addressed.
>>>>>
>>>
>>> I was going to send an email regarding this. I don't see why this 
>>> should be restricted to media types only. I think we should allow 
>>> content-types. The rationale for doing so is -- media types RFCs are 
>>> allowed to specify mandatory parameters. Makes sense?
>>>
>>>>> * The document refers to problems with using URIs in the content 
>>>>> of the mediaType attribute. What are they?
>>>>
>>>> I did not want to repeat the discussions that have occured in XMLP 
>>>> meetings. It appears that it would be useful to repeat the 
>>>> discussion in the document as well. I will do that.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> * The acceptableMediaTypes attribute effectively defines a 
>>>>> protocol. This seems very application-specific, hides a lot of 
>>>>> information in ways that isn't accessible to XML tools, and 
>>>>> reproduces a number of problems that are already evident in HTTP 
>>>>> content negotiation. Why is it necessary to define this mechanism 
>>>>> at all, when it's just as viable to use Schema to constrain what 
>>>>> values are acceptable (for example)?
>>>>
>>>> I am not sure I understand what you are proposing as an alternate 
>>>> approach.
>>>> We simply have two problems at hand.
>>>> (1) declaring the possible range of values that binary data may 
>>>> have (that is known) when schema is created. (image/*)
>>>> (2) declaration of the actual media type that is specified by the 
>>>> document. (image/jpeg)
>>>> For (1), we have discussed several ways of capturing this 
>>>> information in  the WSDL wg, namely declaring the same information 
>>>> via Schema annotations , Schema notations, as well as replicating 
>>>> the possible range of values with additional types that mimic the 
>>>> media type hierarchy.
>>>> After discussing the possibilities at our f2f meetings, an 
>>>> attribute indicating the range of possible values for a media-type 
>>>> appeared to be the simplest way of doing so [1]. Note the current 
>>>> proposal is equivalent to using Schema Annotations. The attribute 
>>>> value could  be also incorporated within an appinfo element and for 
>>>> all technical purposes, IMO, it is equivalent to the proposal we 
>>>> circulated.
>>>> Are you suggesting that we should utilize Schema Annotations 
>>>> instead or are you suggesting another way of accomplishing the same 
>>>> thing? If you are suggesting that we constrain the  range of values 
>>>> that are possible to declare an media type, lets discuss what the 
>>>> acceptable set should be to avoid the content negotiation problems 
>>>> that you are referring to. We were aware that this is rather a 
>>>> liberal set.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> * Section four appears to define a new type of Information Item. 
>>>>> Is this really necessary? Indeed, why is this section necessary at 
>>>>> all?
>>>>
>>>> This is to accomplish (2), namely the document needs to indicate 
>>>> the "actual" media-type of the binary data. Again, it is by using 
>>>> an additional attribute that the "binary" element would carry and 
>>>> indicate the media-type of the element in the document. I don't 
>>>> think that we can get away by not doing this, namely declare only 
>>>> (1) the range of expected media types but not say anything about 
>>>> the actual (concrete) media type  in the document itself. The 
>>>> document is always required to indicate its "concrete" media type, 
>>>> otherwise media-type declared in (1) such as (*/*) would allow any 
>>>> content to appear and would not be very useful for interpreting the 
>>>> media type.
>>>> Therefore, I would appreciate if you could clarify why you review 
>>>> this section to be redundant. If it is the spec language used that 
>>>> may be confusing, lets discuss.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>> --umit
>>>> [1] 
>>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws-desc/2003Sep/0218.html
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -- 
>>>>> Mark Nottingham   Principal Technologist
>>>>> Office of the CTO   BEA Systems
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> -- 
>> Mark Nottingham   Principal Technologist
>> Office of the CTO   BEA Systems
>>

--
Mark Nottingham   Principal Technologist
Office of the CTO   BEA Systems

Received on Wednesday, 10 March 2004 20:43:46 UTC