Re: ACTION-434: Some notes on organizing discussion on WebApps architecture

Roy,

On Oct 17, 2010, at 11:23 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote:

> On Oct 14, 2010, at 2:11 PM, Larry Masinter wrote:
> 
>> Well, I wonder if we might introduce another step between
>> "resource" and "representation" which is "application resource
>> in identified state", so that the representation isn't a
>> representation of the resource, but a representation of the
>> resource in that state.
> 
> Umm, what?  That would be terribly confusing and contrary to
> why I used the term representation in the first place (it is a
> representation by the origin server to the recipient of the state
> of that identified resource at the time of message generation).
> 
> You might be thinking of the hypermedia workspace -- the state of
> the user agent as it proceeds through an application, which may
> include hundreds of representations in various states of modification
> or use by the user agent.  Please don't confuse that with resource
> state or representation -- it is neither of those.  There is a huge
> architectural difference between what is known by the server (and
> available to others as a resource) and the current state of one
> user agent's workspace.  This is particularly important when the
> application uses a special resource to store the workspace state
> itself, such that it can be restored or shared with other devices.

I understand that the distinction is important but I fail to see why it is particularly important in this special case. Isn't the 'workspace state resource' just another resource?

Is there an architectural implication I might be missing?


And to verify: Would "my server-side-stored shopping cart" be a suitable example of such a "workspace state resource"?

Thanks,
Jan


> 
> ....Roy
> 
>

Received on Sunday, 17 October 2010 22:44:08 UTC