Jan, you are correct in your assessment that I wish to parameterize my
request to go to the next page because my parameters are too complex to
represent in a query string. Currently, we are representing our parameter
in XML. The reasoning behind this is that we are trying to support an
enterprise search operation using a SOAP and REST interfaces. Since we have
to encode the request in XML for the SOAP interface, we were hoping to reuse
that XML object within our REST based interfaces as well.
We are using Atom to capture the results of enterprise search. The problem
I encounter arises when we start thinking about the paging of results. For
RESTful access to our services, we are trying to use open source/commercial
Atom readers that support Open Search. The recommendations laid out by the
OpenSearch 1.1 specification
(http://www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1#Example_of_OpenSearch_response_elements_in_Atom_1.0)
suggest implementing paging with <atom:link/> elements using specific
values for @rel (e.g. self, first, previous, next, last). Right now I am
trying to figure out how I can still follow their guidance while managing
the fact that my parameter cannot easily be encoded as a regular query
string.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for your time.