users@jersey.java.net

Re: [Jersey] Jersey's (experimental) approach to support hypermedia constraint

From: Tatu Saloranta <tsaloranta_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:49:10 -0800

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Paul Sandoz <Paul.Sandoz_at_sun.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 10, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Jan Algermissen wrote:
>
...
>> 2) What is the proper way to design media types and
>>  links?
>>  I really (strongly) think that a framework should
>>  either know exactly what it is doing or be silent
>>  about this matter altogether.
>>  Since the whole issue of machine2machine media types
>>  is still not thoroughly analysed (IMHO) it is very
>>  dangerous to promote a certain approch (re 'action
>>  resources').
...
> This is research :-) which is always risky, but even in failure good lessons
> will be learned. You have to start somewhere with experimentation. So i am
> not sure you need to think of this as "dangerous", although the way i
> interpret that is you really care about this area and are extremely
> interested in seeing a good outcome.

I fully agree with this. And I think it is important to point out that
_Jersey project_ should experiment much more so than JAX-RS
_specification_. I agree in that latter should move bit more
carefully.
But it can not move at all without fair amount of trial-and-error in
part of implementations, or at least by people involved with
implementations.
It's just a question of what is a good way of doing this: and I think
as part of work above and beyond what JAX-RS specifies is actually one
good way. This seems to have worked quite well wrt client side stuff,
where all major JAX-RS implementations have been exploring ways to do
this. And in due time it can be standardized, once there is more
understanding.

> I prefer to think of it as an exciting exploration that we are just starting
> out on :-)
>
> What IMHO would be dangerous and very irresponsible is premature
> standardization.

Amen.

I fully believe that "premature standardization is the root of more
evil in software engineering than premature optimization". JSR/JCP
space is littered with pre-mature standardization gone wrong; and it
is still being driven by well-intending individuals and companies. I
think JAX-RS is one counter-example where standardization seems to
occur close to the sweet spot of progress.

-+ Tatu +-