Re: Issue 6404 - use of "whatever"

Along those line, it would seem that saying something like "barring some 
negotiation, the absence of a Dialect value is equivalent tousing  the MEX 
dialect".  Gives the freedom for someone to profile it later - but 
otherwise we make sure "null" is well defined.

thanks
-Doug
______________________________________________________
STSM |  Standards Architect  |  IBM Software Group
(919) 254-6905  |  IBM 444-6905  |  dug@us.ibm.com



Geoff Bullen <Geoff.Bullen@microsoft.com> 
Sent by: public-ws-resource-access-request@w3.org
01/29/2009 09:06 PM

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Subject
Issue 6404 - use of "whatever"






This issue is about defining the MEX dialect and defining what gets 
returned.
 
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6404
 
In particular, I was asked to provide an example of why it might be 
useful, in the case where no dialect is specified in the GetMetadata 
request, for the service itself to be able to decide what it would return 
(the so-called ?whatever? case).  The other option would be for this case 
to return all MEX sections.
 
The best example I can provide for the ?whatever? case is this:
 
If the MEX specification gets ?profiled? for a specific purpose, it would 
be very useful to allow the profile to be able to specify what metadata is 
to be returned in this default case (especially the non-MEX defined 
metadata sections).  If you do not do this then each profile would have to 
define some separate dialect to mean ?give me all the metadata within my 
profile?.  Thus the default case gives you an over-loadable definition of 
?all? or perhaps ?normal?, which can include non-MEX defined sections.
 
In a typical profiled case:
Nothing = ?return all metadata within my profile?
MEX = ?return all MEX dialects?
 
If it is not a profiled implementation, the spec could be recommend that 
the implementation return:
Nothing = MEX = ?return all MEX dialects?