[oslc-scm] SCM Resource Definition - Baseline

[Nick Crossley]

Frank, thanks for this timely question!

We discussed this (indirectly) in the meeting yesterday - for which I have 
not yet posted the minutes.

In the description of the get members operation, I noted that we might 
need options for recursion to various levels, including 0, 1, and 
infinite, but also including down to the 'component' level.  This last was 
an indication that I agree that there is probably some hierarchic 
structure to baselines in many/most SCM systems, and that we might want to 
expose that structure.  This led on to a more general discussion of 
whether or not OSLC SCM services needs to define at least a minimal 
abstract data model, with some commonly used types, and properties of 
object of those types, and links/relationships between objects.

Attempting to define such a shared abstract data mode is non-trivial, 
since different SCM systems have significantly different data models of 
their own.  However, I personally think that the operations we are 
exposing in V1.0 of the SCM services are sufficiently simple that we can 
come up with a shared model (by keeping that model deliberately simple and 
high-level), and that without such an abstract data model it will be very 
difficult for a consumer to use the OSCL SCM services to perform the 
navigation that we describe in our scenario.  Note also that we can 
effectively put some of this data model and/or the mapping of the abstract 
model into a provider-specific model into the service discovery process - 
having the service description suggest certain properties that the user 
should use for queries/reports.

This is obviously an issue we should discuss, so please everyone chime in!

Nick.




From:
Frank Schophuizen <fschophuizen at gmail.com>
To:
oslc-scm at open-services.net
Date:
11/11/2009 10:36 PM
Subject:
[oslc-scm] SCM Resource Definition - Baseline
Sent by:
oslc-scm-bounces at open-services.net



In ScmRestApiV1 the Get members definition mentions:

Response: "Collection of file and directory resources"
Description: "Get information about the members of a baseline"

This assumes that baseline members can only be files and directories. 
However in ScmResourceDefinitionV1 the definition of a baseline has not 
been established yet.
I would like to propose that a baseline can also contain baselines.

For baselines in a baseline, the GetElement operation should at least be 
able to return a reference to the baselines, which can be used in another 
GetElement operation to retrieve its contents.
It may be an option to also support retrieval of the content of a baseline 
in a baseline, but that would potentially run into a deadlock when 
baselines are included cyclicly.

What is your thought about this?

Frank.


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