[georss] [Mass-Market-GEO] OpenSearch Geo - Feedback

[Sean Gillies]

Thank for answering that question. The "RESTfying WFS" (just a exercise, 
not something that necessarily needs to be done) thread on the 
geo-web-rest group comes to many of the same conclusions.

Sean

Jason Cupp wrote:
>> You say that in the web " hypertext as the engine of application
> state"
> - what do you mean by that?
> 
> I think this is the most novel and exciting thing that is happening as
> Web services become more RESTful.
> 
> A lot of it has to do with URL construction. When humans browse the web,
> we follow links, but this isn't typically how web services work. You can
> see a little of this in the OGC capabilities documents. Those documents
> contain hyperlinks to URLs that are 'home' to specific operations -- but
> that's about it, the rest is left to the URL construction (KVP) and POST
> XML rules.
> 
> Other things that would make (OGC) services more RESTful (for catalog
> search at least):
> 
> * the result set representations contain links for [previous] and [next]
> result set. No need to perform URL construction, the link is provided.
> * the result set contains links for alternative formats: 'full',
> 'brief', 'summary', 'Dublin Core', 'ebRIM' representations of the same
> thing.
> * the capabilities would provide a few canonical queries to get the
> client going ( a la OpenSearch? )
>    1) what's new
>    2) what are the new dataset
>    3) what are the new services
>    4) what's new published by X
> 
> * capabilities doesn't provide URLs for operations, but for
> "collections"
>     GetRecords => Records
>     DescribeRecord => Schemas
>     GetRecordById => Records
>     GetDomain => Domains
>     GetCapabilities => Capabilities
>   ( just a name change, but it puts you in a different perspective )
> 
> ...
> 
> - Jason
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org
> [mailto:georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org] On Behalf Of Ron Lake
> Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 10:11 AM
> To: Sean Gillies; georss at lists.eogeo.org
> Subject: Re: [georss] [Mass-Market-GEO] OpenSearch Geo - Feedback
> 
> Hi Sean:
> 
> Thanks for the response.  That is helpful.  I agree that OGC stuff got
> started in the DOM/CORBA days - however all of the services that start
> with the letter W (e.g. WFS, WMS, WRS etc) were conceived in the post
> CORBA/DCOM era.  I would agree that there is some unstated flavor of DCP
> independence in the discussion as of course there is in WSDL (which you
> may feel is un-web like?) - I don't think there is much discussion
> explicit or implicit of OGC services over anything but IP networks - so
> the transports are really down to HTTP, SMTP at most.  I would NOT say
> that OGC services are intended to be RPC-like, nor would I say that they
> necessarily assume high availability nor minimal latency - quite the
> contrary.  Of course the web is infinitely more reliable and latencies
> are often quite minimal compared to the situation in the 90's.
> 
> You say that in the web " hypertext as the engine of application state"
> - what do you mean by that?
> 
> R
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org
> [mailto:georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org] On Behalf Of Sean Gillies
> Sent: October 10, 2007 9:47 AM
> To: georss at lists.eogeo.org
> Subject: Re: [georss] [Mass-Market-GEO] OpenSearch Geo - Feedback
> 
> Ron,
> 
> I think Pete Lacey's recent post about new taxonomic terms might be 
> handy here:
> 
> http://wanderingbarque.com/nonintersecting/2007/10/08/towards-a-better-n
> etwork-programming-taxonomy/
> 
> Services that are "for the web" are what Lacey calls network-oriented 
> computing. These take into account the latency and unreliability of the 
> web. They also embrace the constraints of the web: URLs, hypertext as 
> the engine of application state, and a very limited set of semantics for
> 
> accessing resources (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE).
> 
> OGC services are what Lacey would call network-indepedent computing 
> (NIC) in that they attempt to abstract away the network. They try to 
> provide equivalent interfaces across a bunch of "DCP Types", of which 
> HTTP is just one. It's also my understanding that the OGC services had 
> their origins in the CORBA/DCOM mindset of the 90s, back when a lot of 
> enterprises were still skeptical about the Web.
> 
> Sean
> 
> Ron Lake wrote:
>> Jason et al:
>>
>> One thing that would help in these discussions is to understand what
> one
>> means when we say "for the web".  Clearly all OGC services are
> intended
>> to function on the web and do to transactions, interact with one
> another
>> etc across the Internet.  Do you mean a particular suite of
> applications
>> "on the web" ?  How are these applications distinguished?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Ron
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org
>> [mailto:georss-bounces at lists.eogeo.org] On Behalf Of Jason Cupp
>> Sent: October 10, 2007 3:52 AM
>> To: georss at lists.eogeo.org
>> Subject: Re: [georss] [Mass-Market-GEO] OpenSearch Geo - Feedback
>>
>> Mass-market WWW began as static HTML pages... now it's AJAX, HTTP
>> services, etc... it evolves. Our realization and use of the Web
> changes
>> overtime in re-re-re-interpretation of REST principals and whatever
>> comes next. 
>>
>> CSW was just right for it's time. Is it wrong for the Web NOW? Maybe,
>> that's why we have working groups. Is OpenSearch right for the Web 20
>> years from now? Maybe... maybe not. Can discovering GIS resources work
>> using CSW. Yes. Should we try to gain greater appeal by adopting more
>> suitable (accepted today) technology? Most think so. Would OpenSearch
> do
>> the trick? That's what we're trying to figure out...
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Charlie Savage [mailto:cfis at savagexi.com] 
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 6:08 PM
>> To: Jason Cupp
>> Cc: georss at lists.eogeo.org
>> Subject: Re: [georss] [Mass-Market-GEO] OpenSearch Geo - Feedback
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>>> Everyone is struggling to get a web search API just right for their
>>> users;  CSW suffers the same way that all OGC services do in the
>> growing
>>> REST spotlight. For -which- web at -which- time, a moving target,
>> until
>>> people start getting real work done on top of it.
>> Let me cordially disagree with your comment about the web.  I only see
> 
>> one web - what other web are you seeing?
>>
>> Also, I'm not sure what you mean by -which- time?  And I'm sure I
> don't 
>> understand your comment about "start getting real work done on top of 
>> it."  On top of the web?  Really?
>>
>> Charlie