[oslc-core] Question about how clients should handle server's MAY / SHOULD requirements

[Samit Mehta]

We have come across at least one requirement (marked as MAY), where it is 
unclear how an OSLC service consumer client can determine whether an OSLC 
service provider server supports the requirement or not.  Also, it wasn't 
clear what the service response would be if a server did not support the 
requirement. 

Here's the one we ran into: 
http://open-services.net/bin/view/Main/OslcCoreSpecification?sortcol=table;up=#Selective_Property_Values
.  There may be others.  The section starts of by saying:
        OSLC Services MAY support a technique called Selective Properties 
to enable clients to retrieve only selected property values.

It is unclear how a client may determine that a an OSLC service provider 
supports the oslc.properties and oslc.prefix parameters are supported. 
Also, is there a specific response that the clients should expect from the 
server when they are not supported... is there any way to differentiate 
that response from responses returned in other error scenarios?

Regards,
____________________________________________
Samit Mehta
mailto:samit.mehta at us.ibm.com
IBM Rational Software - Business Development