Re: [oslc-core] JSON-LD of compact resources

[John Arwe <johnarwe@us.ibm.com>]

> 1. Somewhere the consumer gets the URL for the compact
resource, 
> probably through 
>     following a link from another resource. 

I'm not sure what a "compact resource"
is.  In the contributed specs, there is simply "a" resource
and it either does/not have a compact *representation*.
There have been past discussions to
the effect that the "compact  representation" language is
incorrect, and it *should be* a separate resource ... is that your meaning?
 I thought on the call we agreed to stick with the base definitions,
but maybe I missed something.

> 2. It knows, through a specification it was implemented
against 
> (i.e. a resource shape 
>     from that spec) that the target of that link is "likely
to be" a
> compact representation. 

The client only knows (sticking with
contributed-specs language in this reply) that the resource identified
by the URL it holds might/not have a compact representation.

Even without that critical distinction, in general I'd be careful about implying anything around resource shapes; in our implementations it has been 1/n-1 (against resource shapes, i.e. exactly 1 product exposes them out of a dozen-plus).

>    4ai)IF the resource really is a compact representation then it

I think that's: If the server returned a compact representation ...

Which raises a NEW question, if we have >1 compact representation: how does the client know if it got back a compact representation?  In the contributed document, there is only one media type that covers both "what it is" semantically and "what syntax does it use".  On our espoused path that relation is no longer 1:1, and the media type only conveys the syntax (I assert, given what those media type registrations say).  

(and flipping this around) If we allow these json media types *as a way for a client to ask for a compact representation*, how does the server know to send a *compact* representation, vs a JSON or JSON-LD serialization of what a client would receive on a text/turtle request to the same URL?  I.e. how does the server know (given that the URL for the "compact representation" and the not-compact one are the same) which the client is really after?

Best Regards, John

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