Re: ldp-ISSUE-59 (recursive-delete): Reconsider usage of Aggregate/Composite construct to get predictable container delete behavior [Linked Data Platform core]

On 19 Mar 2013, at 20:05, "Wilde, Erik" <Erik.Wilde@emc.com> wrote:

> On 2013-03-19 5:10 , "Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group Issue
> Tracker" <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:
>> ldp-ISSUE-59 (recursive-delete): Reconsider usage of Aggregate/Composite
>> construct to get predictable container delete behavior [Linked Data
>> Platform core]
>> http://www.w3.org/2012/ldp/track/issues/59
>> 
>> Proposal:
>> a) Remove the concepts of AggregateContainer and CompositeContainer.
>> Leaving the only kind of container to be ldp:Container
>> b) Have DELETE on a container only delete the container itself, not its
>> members.  Introduce a "recursive delete" mechanism, that deletes the
>> container and issues a DELETE on all its members (if the members are also
>> containers, it recurses the delete).  The server may not be able to
>> successfully delete the members but will at least attempt the DELETE.  It
>> would seem unreasonable for the errors on deletion of members to be
>> composed into a error report in that it would be infrequently used and
>> come at a cost to produce.  Clients that need to know, could know based
>> on some condition or minimal error response, then attempting to access
>> member resources.
> 
> that sounds a lot like application behavior, and not like something that
> LDP should or even could do. all we can say is how to interact through
> HTTP with individual resources, and what the side effects may be. this
> kind of "transaction/batch model" would complicate LDP a lot, and should
> rather be addressed on the application level: if clients want to DELETE
> "recursively", they GET the links, and then issue DELETE requests.
> 
> as a side note, i still think that the simplest solution to all of that is
> to simply have a concept of linked vs. server-managed content and say that
> a DELETE on the container DELETEs everything managed in it. if content was
> POSTed to the server, it will get deleted. if content was linked from a
> POSTed member, it remains unaffected. in either case, the member (the LDP
> metadata POSTed to the container) will get deleted if the container is
> deleted. i still haven't seen any reason why we shouldn't go with the
> simple semantics.

+1

> 
> cheers,
> 
> dret.
> 
> 

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