Harry,
> I considered using a simple GET/POST approach, but admit I
> don't see the benefit to this. I am leaning towards
> implementing our application interfaces as Web services,
> using a toolkit - probably Axis.
I'm interested in a SOAP-based approach, but I think I agree with Tod
that having a simple HTTP GET/POST interface which returns an RDF/XML
document would be nice.
Is it not putting a (slightly) heavier burden on user applications to
insist that they use SOAP? Or is the difference really minimal? If it is
minimal, then that seems OK.
On the issue of transmitting RDF/XML in SOAP messages... I must admit it
never occurred to me there was a problem, but I looked briefly at
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-soaprdf/
I think (but I'm not sure?) that all the resources described in the DCMI
schemas (or at least the resources for which we'd expose descriptions
through this interface) have URIs assigned to them and so don't use
rdf:ID, so wouldn't that fit into the simple case illustrated by listing
6?
In, the SOAP primer at
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-soap12-part0-20021219/
section 5.2 shows RDF/XML encoded in SOAP using an RDF-specific
env:encodingStyle. Will something like that work for the DC
descriptions? Or are there subtleties I'm not seeing? Quite probably!
Pete
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