WITW: NSDL Update
There's been good feedback, and I do have plans, but I've been a little distracted.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
Since Tim lent his nearly infinite blog-karma to my NSDL musings, there's been a renewed surge of interest. I haven't really had a chance to work on it recently, but I figured I should say something.
The story is, right after I published that essay, I got a lot of good and interesting feedback. Then I had to move the server out of my closet right away and then I got distracted by Flickr and other things.
I do plan to roll out a new release of Where In The World and I'll try to update NSDL at the same time. I've got a couple of long flights coming up, and some vacation time, so this might surface by June.
“We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Comments
I think you and Tim should converge on a single clean alternative to WSDL, with a better name. NSDL is too personal, and SMEX-D sounds like something you scrape out from under your fingernails.
I think the SMEX-D framework is the better one overall, but since it provides nothing for compiler binding/RPC, it needs to be enhanced with elements from NSDL. On the response side, the NSDL elements
result
andfault
Do The Right Thing, and should be allowed withinsmex-d:response
.On the request side, provide something like a
prototype
element, a child ofsmexd:request
, which shows you what the document to be sent looks like, and a list ofnsdl:parameter
elements, likewise children ofsmexd:request
, whose values are plugged into the prototype.An obvious tactic for plugging in would be: If an element or attribute name in a
nsdl:parameter
matches an element or attribute name inside the prototype, replace it. If$name
is found in character content or an attribute value within the prototype, replace it too.Wuddaya think? RELAX and TREX merged and are doing Great Things.