RE: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-asid-mime-direct-02.txt

["Alec Dun (Exchange)" <AlecDu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's more a question of logistics than of extra code.  If there is a
schema/config file, then I have to update a config file every time there
is an updated/changed profile.  What if I'm writing a piece of pass-thru
code that translates, sorts, searches, or otherwise operates on the data
(without understanding it) and passes it along to an application that
does understand the profile.  The generic code may ship separately from
the application code.  So now I have to upgrade the generic handling
tables and the application software rather than just having to update
the application software when the profile changes.

We can avoid the problem of endless permutations by requiring that the
datatype(s) of a property are defined along with the property itself.
For example, I would define "Location" (in the appointment profile) to
always be of type text.  If the application on the other end understands
the appointment profile it can assume "Location" is of type text without
even looking at the datatype parameter.  Folks that are writing generic
code can use the datatype parameter to deal with the property without
needing inherent knowledge of the schema and type of the property within
that schema.

Thanks,
Alec. 

>----------
>From: 	Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no[SMTP:Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no]
>Sent: 	Sunday, August 25, 1996 12:58 PM
>To: 	Alec Dun (Exchange)
>Cc: 	'Tim Howes'; 'ietf-asid@umich.edu'; 'ietf-calendar@imc.org'
>Subject: 	Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-asid-mime-direct-02.txt
>
>The intermediate mode is to have code that has generic handling
>for your datatypes, and a config file that lists the type for
>each field. Not much extra code there.
>
>The irritating thing about having fieldname + datatype is that
>EVERYONE has to handle every combination of those that isn't
>explicitly outlawed by the specs - the number of silly states
>is rather high.
>
>Grouping: You will get lots of parameters on the datatype line if
>there are lots of interesting properties of the data. If you need
>them, you need to provide a place for them in the other scheme too:
>
>Location; datatype=text; language=german; charset=iso-8859-1:
>      "at the boathouse"
>
>Things get complex if we need them to be complex, or if we don't clean
>them up by thinking hard about what we REALLY need.
>
>IMHO, Properties doesn't have the guts to be a top level MIME type.
>"Not interesting enough", I would say.
>
>
>        Harald A
>
>
>