I do not believe that the problem with the core spec that you describe exists. I think the core spec is fine in this area and should be left alone - I think the current design is superior to the one you propose.
Your description says that the problem arises when the user requests http://example.org/bugs, and the server decides to respond with only the first page. In the model upon which the core spec is based, this can't happen. "The list of bugs" and "the first page of the list of bugs" are two different concepts and are thus two different resources with two different URLs, and the server does not have the right to respond with the representation of one when the other was requested. The URL for "the first page of the list of bugs" is clearly specified in the core spec - it is http://example.org/bugs?oslc.paging=true. Although the server may not respond with "the first page of the list of bugs" when the client asked for "the list of bugs", it might be acceptable for the server to perform a 302 (or 303) redirect if it decided that the requested resource is too big to return. An argument against this would be that it is unfriendly to surprise a client that may not understand paging in this way, but on the other hand, returning an unworkably large representation might be worse and so the redirect might be the lesser of two evils. If the server did perform a redirect to http://example.org/bugs?oslc.paging=true, a subsequent GET on that URL would produce the following representation according to the current core spec design: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"; xmlns:oslc=" http://open-services.net/ns/core#"; xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List</dcterms:title> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1"; /> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/2"; /> <!-- etc. --> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1000 "/> </rdf:Description> <oslc:ResponseInfo rdf:about=" http://example.org/bugs?oslc,paging=true";> <dcterms:title>Bug List - Page 1</dcterms:title> <oslc:totalCount>10000</oslc:totalCount> <oslc:nextPage rdf:resource=" http://example.org/bugs/pages/2"; /> </oslc:ResponseInfo> </rdf:RDF> As you can see there is no problem because the two dcterms:title triples have different subjects. Best regards, Martin |------------> | From: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Arthur Ryman/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | To: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |[email protected] | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | Date: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |11/23/2010 12:47 PM | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | Subject: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |[oslc-core] Issue with the Use of dcterms:title and dcterms:description with oslc:ResponseInfo | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | Sent by: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |[email protected] | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| While reviewing an implementation I noticed that dcterms:title and dcterms:description can be used with oslc:ResponseInfo. This can lead to confusion in the case of requesting a any resource, since that resource itself may use those properties. The resource URI of the first page of a multi-page response is the same as the URI of the resource itself. For example, suppose we have a resource that is a list of bugs and that it has the dcterms:title "List of Bugs". Suppose it contains 10,000 bugs, and this is too much to return in one response. This resource is like: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"; xmlns:oslc=" http://open-services.net/ns/core#"; xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List</dcterms:title> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1"; /> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/2"; /> <!-- etc. --> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/10000"; /> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> Suppose the service will only return 1,000 or less bugs per response. When you get the bug list URI, the response therefore gets paged. The OSLC Core spec says that the first page looks something like: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"; xmlns:oslc=" http://open-services.net/ns/core#"; xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List</dcterms:title> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1"; /> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/2"; /> <!-- etc. --> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1000"; /> </rdf:Description> <oslc:ResponseInfo rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List - Page 1</dcterms:title> <oslc:totalCount>10000</oslc:totalCount> <oslc:nextPage rdf:resource=" http://example.org/bugs/pages/2"; /> </oslc:ResponseInfo> </rdf:RDF> The issue here is that now there are two dcterms:title triples associated with the subject node <http:example.org/bugs>, which is confusing since the second one (a child of the oslc:ResponseInfo element) is really the title of the response. I can see two fixes. I prefer fix 1 since it cleanly separates the response info from the request result data. 1. (Preferred) Introduce another property, e.g. oslc:request to identify the request URI, and use a blank node for oslc:ResponseInfo. The result is now: <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"; xmlns:oslc=" http://open-services.net/ns/core#"; xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List</dcterms:title> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1"; /> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/2"; /> <!-- etc. --> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1000"; /> </rdf:Description> <oslc:ResponseInfo> <oslc:request rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs"; /> <dcterms:title>Bug List - Page 1</dcterms:title> <oslc:totalCount>10000</oslc:totalCount> <oslc:nextPage rdf:resource=" http://example.org/bugs/pages/2"; /> </oslc:ResponseInfo> </rdf:RDF> 2. Use different properties for title and description, e.g. oslc:responseTitle, oslc:responseDescription <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"; xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"; xmlns:oslc=" http://open-services.net/ns/core#"; xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";> <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <dcterms:title>Bug List</dcterms:title> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1"; /> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/2"; /> <!-- etc. --> <rdfs:member rdf:resource="http://example.org/bugs/1000"; /> </rdf:Description> <oslc:ResponseInfo rdf:about="http://example.org/bugs";> <oslc:responseTitle>Bug List - Page 1</oslc:responseTitle> <oslc:totalCount>10000</oslc:totalCount> <oslc:nextPage rdf:resource=" http://example.org/bugs/pages/2"; /> </oslc:ResponseInfo> </rdf:RDF> Regards, ___________________________________________________________________________ Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management IBM Software, Rational Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063 _______________________________________________ Oslc-Core mailing list [email protected] http://open-services.net/mailman/listinfo/oslc-core_open-services.net
