[XML-SIG] REST made more concrete still

[akuchlin@mems-exchange.org]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 04:57:00PM -0800, Paul Prescod wrote:
>http://www.prescod.net/wrdl.html

Hmmm... I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

* In the example, purchaseOrder has the query string declared as type 
  integer.  In the invocation example, at no point is this integer parameter
  supplied.

* I don't understand the match attribute of 'representation'; does it mean
  that "if the XPath expression returns a non-empty set of nodes, the
  document is considered to match this representation type.  The set
  of matching nodes is then discarded, having served its purpose."

* I also don't understand the sentence about " This is not a problem
  because representations are only checked in a boolean fashion..."
  This doesn't clarify what happens if a document matches multiple 
  representation types; is it considered to be all of those matching types, 
  or just one of them?

* How do you know when a new resource has been created in response to 
  some request?  Is that indicated in the returned document in some way
  dependent on its schema?  (Say, if it has a <new-resource> element in it.)  
  Or is it an HTTP header or something like that?

* In the 'po' representation type, what are the approve and cancel
  references intended to be, semantically?  Are they resources that you could
  POST to in ordr to approve or cancel the order, or something else?
  (Having them be xsltResources makes it really unclear what they're
  supposed to be.)

* Am I going to have to invent 187 different schemas for an application?
  Say a resource has a bunch of subresources: an owner, a history, etc.
  Some of these might use an existing schema -- RDF, HTML, whatever --
  but some might return something simple or ad hoc, such as just a 
  string or an integer.  Do I have to dress up this return value as:

<dummy-root>http://newuri/</dummy-root>
<dummy-root>35</dummy-root>

  Or could I declare "treat the body of this action as a string/integer/
  new URI"?
  
I have a project currently specified as a set of XML-RPC interfaces;
RESTifying it will make an interesting thought experiment.


--amk                                                  (www.amk.ca)
"The future" has arrived but they forgot to update the docs.
    -- R. David Murray, 9 May 2000