Subject: [weirds] Fwd: Standardising Structure in URIs

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:40:57 -0700

FYI, this is likely to be adopted by APPSAWG.  It may affect our URI
specification stuff, which I think drew a DISCUSS during IESG evaluation.

-MSK

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 9:03 PM
Subject: Standardising Structure in URIs
To: Apps Discuss <[email-masked]>
Cc: Murray Kucherawy <[email-masked]>, Salvatore Loreto <
[email-masked]>, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>

I started this draft during the Berlin meeting, and since have had a lot of
positive feedback.

Would the APPSAWG be interested in taking it on as a WG document?

Regards,

Begin forwarded message:

> From: [email-masked]
> Subject: New Version Notification for
draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02.txt
> Date: 29 August 2013 2:01:29 PM AEST
> To: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
>
>
> A new version of I-D, draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02.txt
> has been successfully submitted by Mark Nottingham and posted to the
> IETF repository.
>
> Filename:      draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn
> Revision:      02
> Title:                 Standardising Structure in URIs
> Creation date:         2013-08-29
> Group:                 Individual Submission
> Number of pages: 8
> URL:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02.txt
> Status:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn
> Htmlized:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02
> Diff:
http://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02
>
> Abstract:
>   Sometimes, it is attractive to add features to protocols or
>   applications by specifying a particular structure for URIs (or parts
>   thereof).  This document cautions against this practice in standards
>   (sometimes called "URI Squatting").
>
>
>
>
> Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of
submission
> until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
>
> The IETF Secretariat
>

--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/

---

From: Andy Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:34:34 +0000

Is it possible we can get the draft author to address our specifications? I agree with some of the content of that draft, but other bits seem to say "THOU MUST use URI Templates". That is an issue that has been discussed a couple of times here, but it seems to add little utility and causes more complexity on the client in addition to additional roundtrips.

-andy

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Date: Thursday, August 29, 2013 2:40 PM
To: "[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>" <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Subject: [weirds] Fwd: Standardising Structure in URIs

FYI, this is likely to be adopted by APPSAWG.  It may affect our URI specification stuff, which I think drew a DISCUSS during IESG evaluation.

-MSK

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Date: Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 9:03 PM
Subject: Standardising Structure in URIs
To: Apps Discuss <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Cc: Murray Kucherawy <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>, Salvatore Loreto <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>

I started this draft during the Berlin meeting, and since have had a lot of positive feedback.

Regards,

Begin forwarded message:

> From: [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
> Subject: New Version Notification for draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02.txt
> To: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
>
>
> URL:             http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02.txt
> Status:          http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn
> Htmlized:        http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02
> Diff:            http://www.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-nottingham-uri-get-off-my-lawn-02
>
> Abstract:
> Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
> until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org<http://tools.ietf.org>.
>
> The IETF Secretariat
>

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 12:35:29 -0700

As it will be a working group item, it's certainly open for discussion.  If
you'd like to broach the topic on apps-discuss now, please feel free to do
so.

-MSK

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Andy Newton <[email-masked]> wrote:

>  Is it possible we can get the draft author to address our
> specifications? I agree with some of the content of that draft, but other
> bits seem to say "THOU MUST use URI Templates". That is an issue that has
> been discussed a couple of times here, but it seems to add little utility
> and causes more complexity on the client in addition to additional
> roundtrips.
>
>  -andy
>
>   From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
> To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Aug 2013 20:30:06 -0000

>Is it possible we can get the draft author to address our specifications? I agree with some of the content of
>that draft, but other bits seem to say "THOU MUST use URI Templates". That is an issue that has been discussed a
>couple of times here, but it seems to add little utility and causes more complexity on the client in addition to
>additional roundtrips.

I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.

Templates are great when you have existing services, or stuff that's
not very well specified, and want to build a consistent interface on
top of them.  But we're not doing that, since there are no existing
WEIRDS servers and the range of what it'll be used for is quite
narrow. (The beta servers, though very useful, don't count since
they're for testing, not officially for production.)

I fear a religious argument along the lines of "someone might need to
use a different URL format", "there's no reason to do that, these are
all new and most are built from of the Chinese prototype", "yeah, but
someone MIGHT need to use a different format", etc. ...

R's,
John

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:37:38 -0700

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 1:30 PM, John Levine <[email-masked]> wrote:

> >that draft, but other bits seem to say "THOU MUST use URI Templates".
> That is an issue that has been discussed a
Emphatically "no hat" here:

It seems to me that the people pushing Mark's position (including Mark, of
course) are a lot more entrenched in web architecture than this group is,
at least in terms of what we're chartered to work on.  Pushing back on the
way they say it should be done would be (to my mind) like SMTP people
telling TCP people that they're doing it wrong; we're making use of
mechanisms they provide for our purposes, so we should probably follow
their lead.

More simply: If web experts have concluded (I presume based on experience
and/or evidence) that the extra round trip and client complexity is
architecturally the right way to do it, how come we want to fight them on
that point?

-MSK

---

From: Andy Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 20:52:28 +0000

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Date: Thursday, August 29, 2013 4:37 PM
To: John Levine <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Cc: "[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>" <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>>
Subject: Re: [weirds] Fwd: Standardising Structure in URIs

More simply: If web experts have concluded (I presume based on experience and/or evidence) that the extra round trip and client complexity is architecturally the right way to do it, how come we want to fight them on that point?

Because those are real considerations which they have not addressed, at least not in that document.

-andy

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Aug 2013 16:54:59 -0400

> architecturally the right way to do it, how come we want to fight them on

I've looked at the arguments, and templates are a brilliant solution to a 
problem we don't have.

The only way I can imagine they'd be useful for WEIRDS is if someone later 
decided to embed into some larger existing service.  And even if they did 
that, they could still add the templates for the larger service, which 
would map some generic queries into the WEIRDS URLs, and WEIRDS could 
ignore them.

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:35:18 -0700

> I've looked at the arguments, and templates are a brilliant solution to a

I guess I'm missing how the arguments don't apply to us, or how we're
different from any other web application that's tried to do this.  Why is
WEIRDS special in this way?

-MSK

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Aug 2013 18:06:44 -0400

> WEIRDS special in this way?

We have an unusual application with no installed base, and little chance 
that there are other services that are not WEIRDS but would want a 
compatible interface.  If we thought it were important to layer WEIRDS on 
top of the existing registrar web WHOIS servers, templates might be 
helpful, but a) for political reasons they are likely to implement WEIRDS 
directly, and b) the exsting ones are all horrible.

I also have to say that the level of theological rigidity in the web 
services area is as bad as it is in other areas we've encountered.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.