Subject: [Ietf-not43] serialization and named queries

From: andy at hxr.us (Andrew Newton)
Date: Fri Dec 12 15:37:21 2003

Happy Holidays,

In writing some serialization code yesterday, I had some thoughts on 
minor changes to improve it.

1) Get rid of <serializedNamedQuery>.  I'm not sure there is a need for 
it any more, and any server supporting serialization must have a 
codepath that is separate from the other two children of <serialization> 
(not to mention a separate codepath for sending it).  Does anybody think 
we need this?

2) I noticed that serialization actually can't support serialization of 
direct entity references.  This is an oversight.  I propose the creation 
of a <serializedReferral> child to support both entity references and 
search continuations.  Additionally, this means we could rip out some of 
the attributes from <searchContinuation> that do not make sense for 
sending over the wire.  This would also simplify codepaths as both types 
would be very similar.

3) It occurs to me that the "service-definition" entity class may 
actually conflict with some desired name for an entity class in the 
future (after all, this is a service about other services).  Perhaps 
renaming it to "iris" would be better.  I think that more directly 
describes that it contains entities specific to the operation of the 
iris servers themselves.

4) While I want to do away with the <serializedNamedQuery> thing, I do 
see a need for a separate entity class for tucking away all those 
copyright notices, acceptable use policies, etc. etc.  Therefore, the 
"named-query" entity class should be renamed to "local" to denote that 
these are things locally defined.

Comments?

-andy