Proposal for "Mash-up/Browser" bindings

[David Nuescheler <david@day.com>]

Dear TC members,

as part of the upcoming Apache Chemistry [1] project I started
producing a JavaScript library that would allow to access
the atom bindings and would allow a mash-up client (browser)
to interact with a CMIS compliant repository. As you can
see on the CMIS matrix [2], the JavaScript client was able
to connect to a variety of repositories.

I noticed that the atom bindings do not lend themselves to
be consumed by a lightweight browser client and for example
cannot even satisfy the very simple usecase of uploading a
file from the browser into a CMIS repository. Even simple read
operations require hundreds of lines of JavaScript code.

Based on my impressions I started to have conversations with
a number of other TC members during the plugfest and over lunch
I had a discussion with Al and others at my table around the
topic of adding an additional binding that was based on JSON
GETs for reading and multi-part POSTs for writing. The goal
of this binding would be to deliver on the mash-up usecase
and allow for very simple interaction with current web browsers.
from a functional standpoint these bindings don't necessarily
need to cover the full spectrum of cmis functionality, but
instead should allow the most simple and convenient access
to the repository just to break down the entry barrier for
web developers.

I think we could call it the "mashup-" or "web-" or
"browser-binding".

It seemed that everybody I talked to was very excited, so I
would like to volunteer to write and orchestrate a proposal
(Dave Caruana volunteered to help me ;) ). I understand that we
would be operating under a great time pressure based on our
schedule but i am confident that having such a binding would
make CMIS a true web 2.0 specification and hence would add
a lot of value.

Please let me know what you think.

regards,
david

[1] http://incubator.apache.org/chemistry
[2] http://liip.to/cmismatrix

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