[oslc-core] Unrecognized content

[Arthur Ryman]

-1 for the 400 response code

Jim, I don't understand what you are asking for. The spec already makes it 
clear that the server will discard unrecognized content. The client should 
expect that. What aspect of behavior is unclear?

Regards, 
___________________________________________________________________________ 

Arthur Ryman 

DE, Chief Architect, Reporting &
Portfolio Strategy and Management
IBM Software, Rational 

Toronto Lab | +1-905-413-3077 (office) | +1-416-939-5063 (mobile) 





From:
James Conallen <jconallen at us.ibm.com>
To:
Oslc-Core at open-services.net
Cc:
Adam Neal/Ottawa/IBM at IBMCA
Date:
09/07/2012 09:03 AM
Subject:
[oslc-core] Unrecognized content
Sent by:
oslc-core-bounces at open-services.net



In the current specification we have the statement:
For OSLC Defined Resources, clients SHOULD assume that an OSLC Service 
will discard unknown property values. An OSLC Service MAY discard property 
values that are not part of the resource definition or Resource Shape 
known by the server.

We are running into a problem. When a client (in this case another 
application server) PUTs an update to a resource that includes a 'link' to 
another OSLC resource, and the server, at the time does not recognize the 
link type, the link is not accepted, but a 200 OK is returned.  The server 
returns a 200 OK, because it feels like it can ignore the unrecognized 
link.  The client gets that 200 OK, and thinks that the link was 
successfully added.

This doesn't feel right.  The only way a client can be sure that the PUT 
worked as expected is to re-GET the resource and compare it to what it 
expected to see (with the new link included), and maybe do a little 
looking at ETags to make sure things haven't changed in between.

I guess the server could instead return a 400 Bad Request, and include in 
the response the reason for not accepting the PUT.  But if the content 
that was submitted really should just be ignored (i.e. is part of a future 
version of the resource), then we don't want to abort the update.

The OSLC verbage does not provide any guidance as to what to do.  It would 
be helpful if we had more detailed explanation of this statement in the 
spec.


Thanks,

jim conallen
Rational Design Management (DM) Integration Architect, OSLC AM Lead
jconallen at us.ibm.com
Rational Software, IBM Software Group
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