On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 5:48 AM, Randy Bias <randyb@gogrid.com> wrote:
That would be great, but I can envision vendors implementing things in a
different way initially and as one version 'wins' we can roll that into the
baseline as the API is iterated over time.
We're going to have to evolve fairly quickly and on an ongoing basis I would say. You've probably already seen that the core is absolutely minimalist, telling you how to authenticate and interact with the endpoint.
Everything, including what you would think is basic functionality (search, machine control) is implemented as an extension, and the use of namespaces throughout (something Richard@EH isn't particularly convinced about) ensures that these extensions don't have to worry about standing on each others toes.
Not only does this mean that vendors can write their own extensions (and extend existing ones with attributes, actuators, etc.), but when we come to adding more functionality above/below the infrastructure layer we'll just be talking about writing extension(s).
An example of where this might be useful is $networking_vendor wanting to manage the underlying fabric. Rather than having them roll something completely proprietary and have two points of contact with the infrastructure they can extend OCCI into areas that we aren't particularly interested in covering (just yet).
Given that working groups tend to have "start" and "end" points we'll have to look at setting up something like an attribute registry with e.g. IANA (see the Atom link relations for example). This is a great way to play nice with other standards efforts too.