[oslc-core] Creation of new OSLC Shape Resources?

[Ian Green1]

DOORS and RRC systems have a customizable, user-defined type system.  As 
OSLC RM providers, they surface these types as OSLC Resource Shapes. Other 
applications commonly do the same.

Whilst OSLC shape allows providers to describe the shape of their 
resources, I'm not sure that it allows OSLC collaborators to agree on a 
vocabulary for linking (I'm picking on linking, but the same goes for 
other uses of shape).  A basic requirement for this is to be able to 
create new resource shapes.

I wonder how many OSLC implementations are capable of accepting a resource 
whose shape is described by a resource hosted at another authority? 
Without such provision, collaborators will tend to replicate resource 
shape resources (using oslc:describes and oslc:propertyDefinition to 
identify those shapes across providers).  If this approach is followed, 
there is a risk that the synchronization of changes to those shape 
resources will break and inconsistencies will result.

Today I don't think that the OSLC specifications cater for the basic need 
to create new resource shapes;  I do think that the specifications admit a 
single resource shape to be used to describe the shape of resources in 
multiple distinct providers.  Is this the right way to proceed?  (For 
example, is the central shape model realistic given its affinity to the 
data?)

As far as shape creation goes, does anyone see a problem with a creation 
factory that allows new resource shapes to be POSTed?  (The same for query 
and the delegated UIs.)

best wishes,
    -ian





Unless stated otherwise above:
IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 
741598. 
Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://open-services.net/pipermail/oslc-core_open-services.net/attachments/20110209/abc03510/attachment-0003.html>