users@jersey.java.net

Re: Documentation

From: Stefan Tilkov <stefan.tilkov_at_innoq.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:34:39 +0200

Your question seems to be how to document your XML's structure. Right?

If so, your options are basically prose, DTD, W3C XML Schema (XSD),
RELAX NG, and Schematron. Taking a wild guess, you might like RELAX NG
best, specifically its compact syntax:

        http://relaxng.org/compact-tutorial-20030326.html

Stefan
--
Stefan Tilkov, http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/
On Apr 24, 2008, at 4:20 PM, Dave Tkaczyk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a question that I hope you can help me with.  There doesn’t  
> seem to be a standard way of documenting how a REST service works -  
> beyond the obvious http methods.  We will be producing and consuming  
> xml.  Is there a standard way to document the use of the xml that we  
> will be producing and consuming?  Our particular concerns are with  
> the content of the xml, the cardinality of sub-elements, data type,  
> and required/optional attributes and elements.
>
> I’ve looked at Amazon’s S3 documentation as an example.  They do a  
> great job of documenting their service from the stand point of http  
> methods, but there doesn’t seem to be any documentation on the  
> entities that will be shared across the wire.  They seem to rely  
> solely on their examples to get the point across.
>
> Also, we are trying to keep this as “lite” as possible, so have  
> ruled out maintaining a WADL as it feels too much like a SOAP WSDL –  
> albeit, simpler to figure out.  Is DTD an option? If so do you have  
> any examples of it in action?  Do people use UML for this purpose?
>
> Am I missing something?  Any advice or examples that you could  
> provide would be very much appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave
>
>
>
>
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