Why Doesn't OSLC Fully Comply with Roy Fielding's HTTP Semantics?

General OSLC
3

Hi Mario,

My confusion is not really on the methods and how they are implemented in OSLC, but rather how they are implemented with respect to a particular path.

Given /foo/{id}, per Fielding:

  1. GET on /foo returns all foo objects. A set of query string parameters can be used to filter the underlying data set.
  2. GET on /foo/{id} returns the foo with the given id.
  3. DELETE on /foo/{id} deletes the foo with the given id
  4. POST on /foo updates a foo, the underlying semantics (create a new one? update in-place, etc.) are defined by the application, not by the specification.
  5. PUT /foo/{id} creates a new foo with the given id replacing any existing one.

I am specifically confused about why OSLC implements completely different semantics RE: 1, 4, and 5. I’ll unpack:

For 1: OSLC defines Query Capabilities, which are completely independent endpoints for filtering the data set. Why doesn’t OSLC just use query string parameters?

For 4 and 5: Creation Factories could be implemented as POST/PUT at the corresponding /foo/{id} endpoints, however OSLC says a separate endpoint must be defined to serve these.

Hope that clarifies the confusion!