Re: [oslc-core] Summary of Discovery Issues

[Nick Crossley <ncrossley@us.ibm.com>]

In Jim's issue 2, 2. Given a resource, how would a client discover information about capabilities on that resource?, Jim stated: "The problem is that if a user has a link to a resource (e.g., an RTC Project Area) that has OSLC capabilities, there's no way to navigate from that resource to the Service Provider that describes those capabilities. For example, if a user had a URL for JKE Banking (Change Management) Project Area, there is no easy way to find the Service Provider resource that would provide the URL for the query capability for that project area."

For resources that are OSLC resources (such as requirement collections or change requests), as opposed to resources that represent something that has OSLC capabilities but are not themselves OSLC resources (such as Jazz project areas), the oslc:serviceProvider property provides exactly the desired navigation. So, one way to address this specific issue is to suggest that servers with resources that represent something that has OSLC capabilities but are not themselves OSLC resources, they nonetheless add an oslc:serviceProvider property.  This is the inverse of the other approach described - to allow oslc:details to point from the service provider to this non-OSLC resource.

Nick.