Comments on: WOA and "Application Neutrality" http://www.subbu.org/blog/2008/11/woa-and-application-neutrality HTTP, REST and some Cycling Mon, 15 Mar 2010 08:14:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Mark http://www.subbu.org/blog/2008/11/woa-and-application-neutrality/comment-page-1#comment-17787 Mark Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:39:21 +0000 http://www.subbu.org/?p=665#comment-17787 Fantastic set of blogs Subbu. Thanks. I read the list thread and while not a specialist I wasn't convinced by the 'application neutrality' idea. Something not mentioned was the idea that the Content-Type could usefully be: extensible (i.e. built-in forward/backward compatibility), self-delimiting (one or several messages) and self-describing. This wouldn't make your RESTful service/site/application of less application-neutral/generic. But, assuming the clients know how to consume such content, wouldn't it make the content more robust to the server side changing (within some limits) the content encoded while the client consumer doesn't change. Protocol buffers fails the self-describing, since if I understand correctly the client has to be given the .proto file. As far as I've encountered it seems that extprot is all there is (http://eigenclass.org/R2/writings/extprot-extensible-protocols-intro). Any thoughts on its suitability as a preferred Content-Type, cf XML and any other type? Cheers Mark Fantastic set of blogs Subbu. Thanks.
I read the list thread and while not a specialist I wasn’t convinced by the ‘application neutrality’ idea.

Something not mentioned was the idea that the Content-Type could usefully be:
extensible (i.e. built-in forward/backward compatibility), self-delimiting (one or several messages) and self-describing.
This wouldn’t make your RESTful service/site/application of less application-neutral/generic. But, assuming the clients know how to consume such content, wouldn’t it make the content more robust to the server side changing (within some limits) the content encoded while the client consumer doesn’t change.
Protocol buffers fails the self-describing, since if I understand correctly the client has to be given the .proto file. As far as I’ve encountered it seems that extprot is all there is (http://eigenclass.org/R2/writings/extprot-extensible-protocols-intro).

Any thoughts on its suitability as a preferred Content-Type, cf XML and any other type?

Cheers
Mark

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