[OASIS Issue Tracker] (OSLCCORE-9) Bootstrapping discovery

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    [ https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/OSLCCORE-9?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=60522#comment-60522 ] 

Samit Mehta commented on OSLCCORE-9:
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I second the last comment.  

Lack of a consistent programmable mechanism to discover the "root ServiceProviderCatalog" in the OSLC v2 spec led to implementers doing different things - several OSLC servers ended up providing a document that complied with Jazz Root Services spec, and implementers documented the template for the Root Services document URL in the product documentation.  This also led to several client OSLC implementations that also only worked with OSLC servers that provided a Jazz Root Services document.  Also, Eclipse Lyo client library implementation now includes a specialized set of classes / APIs to support Jazz Root Services.

LDPC / Options is a huge improvement in how discovery was done using OSLC v2.  But, I don't think that there is sufficient incentive for implementers of servers and clients to move to this mechanism.  By having something in the specification on how to programmatically discover at least the root ServiceProviderCatalog does provide a bigger incentive, since it eliminates the burden on the client to provide non-standard configuration mechanism for discovery that may not work with all OSLC servers.  Even OSLC v2 servers and clients will be able to take immediate advantage of this capability.

I am not understanding the issue raised regarding the potential complication how an OSLC server could end up exposing "information that should only be available to select users" when supporting discovery of partitioned resources.  The implementation of the OSLC Server should protect access to any ServiceProviderCatalog/ServiceProvider/LDPC just like most OSLC v2 Server implementations did.

> Bootstrapping discovery
> -----------------------
>
>                 Key: OSLCCORE-9
>                 URL: https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/OSLCCORE-9
>             Project: OASIS OSLC Lifecycle Integration Core (OSLC Core) TC
>          Issue Type: Task
>            Reporter: Martin Pain
>            Assignee: James Amsden
>
> See https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oslc-core/201503/msg00016.html
> The problem is about the user experience's when configuring OSLC clients to connect to OSLC servers. I think having to search a server's documentation and UI to find a discovery URI that is used only once is not a good user experience, and this will come very early in new users' experimentation with OSLC (both developers and administrators).
> The resource the client wants is the "root" ServiceProviderCatalog. The user will be aware of the idea of URIs representing resources, but the resource in their mind is the server, and the URI they associate with the server is most likely the home page of its web UI. So I suggest we define a Link header rel that is used to link that web UI URI to the ServerProviderCatalog URI.
> So then the user's experience will be:
> - They are reading the client's instructions for integrating with OSLC servers.
> - It says to enter the URI to the server's home page.
> - The user copies that from their browser and enters it into the client.
> - The client finds what it needs on the server. (Under the covers: they do a OPTIONS request on the URI that was provided, follow the Link header that has the rel that we define, and request that URI with an Accept header for the content types that they support, and receive the root ServiceProviderCatalog).
> (The original proposal has been moved to a comment on 24th July 2015 to avoid confusion with the revised proposal that is in the "proposal" field above.)



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