[topicmapmail] Web Services

[Murray Altheim]

Jan Algermissen wrote:
> Christoph Froehlich wrote:
> 
>>Panckoucke is currently used to feed presentation engines. Since some
>>time, I wonder, if it shouldn't be possible to define the model in a way
>>that roundtripping could be done. This would allow us to build editors
>>based upon the panckoucke abstract model.
>
> Regarding my last mail: if a given topic map lives at
> 
> http://www.example.org/topicmaps/xmltools
> 
> 
> it makes perfect sense (from a REST POV) to POST XTM (or whatever)
> to the map to add information.
> 
> You can even create (PUT) and erase (DELETE) maps via HTTP.
> 
> One might use
> 
> DELETE http://www.example.org/topicmaps/xmltools/topics/7763 HTTP/1.0
> 
> to delete a certain topic or
> 
> POST http://www.example.org/topicmaps/xmltools/topics/7763 HTTP/1.0
> Content-type: application/xtm+xml
> Content-length: xxx
> [blank line]
> <topicMap>
>   <topic id="foo">
>      <baseName>....</baseName>
>    </topic>
> </topicMap>
> 
> to add a basename to a particular topic.

Jan,

Since you're actually dealing with XTM directly and not Topic Maps
as a more abstract idea, how do you deal with the issue of the ID
namespace? Do people have to be aware of the list of IDs, or does
the system just fail when either an expected ID isn't there, or
when an inserted ID fails because it's already in use (or there is
an error because of that ID). There may be other XML issues, but
I'm guessing some are fairly easy to deal with (such as requiring
all incoming and outgoing content be in UTF-8).

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

   [...] all matters of authority and responsibility are ultimately
   matters of social practice, and never matters of ontology (that
   is, never just a matter of how things in fact are in the nonhuman
   world). [...] just as we should not look to ground our moral
   judgments in the nonhuman authority of a god, so we should not
   look to ground our empirical judgments in the nonhuman authority
   of an external world.                          -- Robert Brandom
   http://www.tilgher.it/brandom.html