WITW: NSDL Update

Volume 8, Issue 69; 04 May 2005; last modified 08 Oct 2010

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 and fault Do The Right Thing, and should be allowed within smex-d:response.

On the request side, provide something like a prototype element, a child of smexd:request, which shows you what the document to be sent looks like, and a list of nsdl:parameter elements, likewise children of smexd: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.