[NEW ISSUE] WS-MEX: no way to create metadata

Using MEX and WS-Transfer a client can retrieve, manipulate and even 
delete the metadata of an endpoint.  However, there is no mechanism to 
create it.  This seems like a criticial piece missing from the complete 
picture.

Proposal:
Add the ability for a client to create metadata for an endpoint.
No concrete proposal yet but I can think of two possible solutions:

1 - define a CreateMetadata(dialect, identifier, data) type of operation 
in MEX that an endpoint can support.  This is probably the easiest.

2 - Merge T and MEX.  Yes this is much bigger than #1 but its something 
I've been wondering about for a while and would like to at least have a 
discussion of it.

If you think of the XML representation of a resource and its metadata as 
just "data about the resource", then it seems odd to force extra(or 
special) steps to be taken when dealing with metadata.  For example, to 
get the state of a resource you can just use T/RT to retrieve just that 
one chunk of XML. But to get part of the metadata of a resource you must 
use mex.GetMetadata() and then use T/RT to get the data of interest.  Why 
not just treat the metadata as another variant of the resource's data?  So 
the basic idea is to extend the Transfer operations with an optional 
'view' or 'dialect' attribute that specific which piece of data its 
operating on.  For example
   transfer.get() is what we have today - gets the xml represenation of 
the resource
   transfer.get("wsdl") retrieves the wsdl
   transfer.put("wsdl",data) creates/updates the wsdl of the resource

thanks
-Doug
______________________________________________________
STSM  |  Web Services Architect  |  IBM Software Group
(919) 254-6905  |  IBM T/L 444-6905  |  dug@us.ibm.com