Re: [search-ws] Re: ATOM

[Ashley Sanders <a.sanders@manchester.ac.uk>]

Farrukh Najmi wrote:

> I believe we need one mandatory response schema for interop that is 
> guaranteed to be supported by all implementations.
> Otherwise all bets are off w.r.t interop. Simply declaring capabilities 
> supported by server does not help interop unless there is a mimimal set 
> that is
> guaranteed to be present.
> 
> Choosing ATOM as that one mandatory response format has many advantages:
> 
>    * We have less spec content to define and maintain
>    * We get syndication (feed) capability for free
>    * Any existing ATOM capable feed reader will work with a URL
>      representing a search defined by our spec
>    * ATOM syntax is extensible and therefor we will be able to add
>      additional attributes to our response without requiring any one to
>      update ATOM

What about creating a new operation called "feed" -- the only
difference to the current "search" operation is that the response
is in ATOM format. The "search" operation would be as it is now. I
can see objections to having two such similar operations, but it
seems reasonable to me to make people ask for a feed if that is what
they want.

Ashley.

-- 
Ashley Sanders               a.sanders@manchester.ac.uk
Copac http://copac.ac.uk A Mimas service funded by JISC