Re: PaceIntrospection - A use case. (was Re: PaceIntrospection: Is another file format really needed?)

[James Aylett <james@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 02:29:38PM -0700, John Panzer wrote:

> I have a use case for combining the two:  AOL Journals lets a user 
> create as many blogs as they want to; the main pages for these blogs are 
> always under http://journals.aol.com/username/blogname.  We have to 
> provide a standard way to provide a list of the blogs that's easily 
> discoverable given the username.  This list is dynamic and can change 
> from hour to hour, though usually it'd be pretty stable.  The contents 
> of the list, in our case, can change depending on the _requestor_ of the 
> list -- anonymous requests would get only public blogs, whereas 
> authenticated users would get a list of both public blogs and private 
> blogs to which the requestor has been granted access.

So this is for other people (users and non-users) to gain access to
blogs published by 'username'?
 
> The data that a client would want includes an endpoint for getting a 
> list of entries (the <feed>), a URI to the corresponding HTML page if 
> one exists, and perhaps endpoints such as post, comment, etc. This 
> enables software to offer status information (e.g., last post date), 
> subscription, posting, commenting, etc. services.

I understand why you want the feed URI and the HTML page URI. I'm not
sure I see why you need the comment facet given you surely can't
comment until you've read something to comment on - so you need to
fetch the feed or HTML page. Perhaps the comment facet should be in
the feed (particularly as it might be entry-specific)?
 
> It seems useful to me to combine the query-to-get-the-list with the 
> query-to-get-the-endpoints, because they will in reality be combined for 
> this use case.

I'd have thought most users just needed the feed URI and HTML URI, and
nothing else. Do you have the ability to allow authenticated users to
post to some of your own blogs? So a tool would be pointed to
http://journals.aol.com/username/, would fetch the introspection file
(with possible authentication), and know all the blogs it can read
/or/ write to?

> Note that in this _particular_ use case, the 'introspection' file is 
> really a dynamic feed-like-thing.  One could imagine, for example, 
> software that lets you say 'let me know whenever Joe Gregorio creates a 
> new blog!' and uses a feed-like mechanism for polling for this.  We'd 
> want to re-use the Atom authentication mechanisms, polling time hinting, 
> HTTP caching, etc. etc. for this data just as we would for an 
> entry-based feed.  So I think there's some justification for treating it 
> like a feed.

I think /that/ is a good use-case for using an Atom feed file. But I
think it's very different from "give me the facets so I can edit <this
thing>". That's why I don't see the fit.
 
> (There are other, more blue sky, use cases.  Consider a feed of 
> endpoints for all new blogs created by people you know, whether or not 
> you've ever subscribed to any of their blogs.)

Again, why do you need more than just the feed URI and HTML URI? At
most; if you're inside your happy aggregator world, you might not want
the HTML URI.

It's a cool idea, but I don't see why it applies to the introspection
needs.

James

-- 
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  James Aylett                                                  xapian.org
  james@xxxxxxxxxxxx                               uncertaintydivision.org