Re: [provision] New dial-in for July 18 PSTC meeting (to discuss RESTPML)

[Gary Cole <gary.cole@oracle.com>]

Excellent question!  We did not discuss that.

The idea is to represent each object as an instance within some  
class.  Each class is in effect a namespace within which names (or  
identifiers) must be unique.

SPMLv2 specifies that the PSOID must be unique within a target.   
However, many applications do not expose unique internal identifiers.   
For these applications, the only identifier may be name, which may be  
unique only within type.  (RACF is this way, for example. At the UI  
level, everything is by name, and names are unique only within type.).  
For such targets, the PSOID is actually a combination of object-class  
and name.  To do the same thing RESTfully, the most natural way is to  
treat the class as a namespace.

Representing each class as a namespace also makes it easier to support  
SEARCH.  Search is simply a GET on the container; the search filter is  
specified as request parameters.  Search predicates must refer to  
attributes that the objects have; the class usually defines these  
attributes.  This makes it seem even more natural to search on the  
class-object, since the class-object provides meta-data object for all  
instances of the class.

Does this make sense?  Would another scheme seem more natural to you?

On Jul 18, 2011, at 1:47 PM, Tom Zeller wrote:

>> - No one has looked at it yet.
>
> Without implying anything positive or negative, why is "class" in the
> URIs ? What functionality does it provide ?
>
> Apologies for being late to the call if this was already discussed.
>
> TomZ
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
> generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
>