Why 'class' appears in RESTPML URIs

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

Changing subject to better reflect content.

On Jul 18, 2011, at 2:38 PM, Gary Cole wrote:

> 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
>>
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>