[oslc-core] Creating multiple resources in one POST?

[Andrew J Berner]

The current creationFactory description assumes there is only one resource
created by a POST to a creationFactory.  This is "codified" by saying the
location response header should specif[y] the URI of the newly created
resource.

It's a common situation, though, that you may need to programmatically
create multiple resources at once, especially in this "non-attended"
situation.  There's no problem with this in terms of the POST itself...the
RDF document can have multiple resources in it to create and the server can
loop through them doing (almost) whatever it did with the single resource.
The problem is with error handling (what if some are good and some aren't
for different reasons) and that pesky Location header.  (Yes, I know it
says "should" not "must" but that's not the right solution to this issue).

Of course, if it's really "programmatic" then the client code can just loop
through POST commands...the performance will be somewhat different from a
"batch" POST, but maybe that's ok.

However, it's valuable for a person to be able to do this manually through
some tool that allows HTTP POST commands with headers and content...there
are lots of browser plugins to do this.  Then some tool could export a
properly formatted RDF document for the user to POST manually.  And then it
really helps the users to be able to create multiple resources with a
single POST.

Can this be considered as part of OSLC core? (Or maybe I missed a
discussion of it and I'm missing a reason it's a bad idea.)

Andy Berner
Lead Architect, ISV Technical Enablement and Strategy
IBM Rational Business Development
972 561-6599
ajberner at us.ibm.com

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