Hi, I've tried to follow the thread. And here's my 50 cents. I'm currently using restlet to build RESTFul web-services (very nice by the way) in Java. In such a framework, generating the requested format based on the requests's 'Content-Type' attribute is trivial (as long as the transformation is available). This means that my WS can talk (x)html when the user's a human (me), or XML or JSON or plain/text. So for me multi-format is mandatory... and looking at the community this group is made of, I think it's the only way forward. From similar discussions in other spheres... the real point (and someone else made that point already), is >>simplicity<<. So XML's easy to transform. JSON's easy to consume. Text is simple... So... my vote is... all of the above! And as long as the format is aggressively simple... the mapping should be trivial! Cheers, Meb Richard Davies wrote:
I'd like to conduct a straw poll of members on this list.
Tim Bray wrote:
4. Specific advice on multiple formats
Don't do it. Pick one data format and stick with it.
and that does make me question our (/my!) current proposal of multiple formats with automatic conversion.
I'd like to conduct a poll of everyone on this list considering the 3 format options:
- XML - JSON - TXT
Please can people reply to this post casting a single vote for their most preferred of these three formats. I'll tabulate the responses. If there's a clear winner, we should probably go with it alone. If there's a split, then multiple format support as we're currently proposing may be the answer.
I'm going to start the counts with the clearly stated opinions which I've seen to date (listed below). If I'm misrepresenting anyone, then please also reply and I'll change your vote in my count.
XML: 3 - Kristoffer Sheather http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000430.html - Sam Johnston http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000381.html - William Vambenepe http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000396.html
JSON: 7 - Alexis Richardson http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000405.html - Andy Edmonds? http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000420.html - Ben Black http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000395.html - Randy Bias? (JSON listed first at http://wiki.gogrid.com/wiki/index.php/API:Anatomy_of_a_GoGrid_API_Call) - Richard Davies http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000409.html (split EH vote) - Tino Vazquez? http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000411.html - Tim Bray http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000418.html
TXT: 1 - Chris Webb http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/2009-May/000409.html (split EH vote) _______________________________________________ occi-wg mailing list occi-wg@ogf.org http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/occi-wg