[Registry-dev] Some points to discuss in the hackathan

[Chathura C. Ekanayake]

Below are some points I think as important to discuss and finalize in 
the second week of the Registry hackathan.

1) Protocol to access the Registry remotely

We have planned to use APP / REST as the main protocol to access the 
registry by the remote registry clients.
It is possible to map resource access features (add, modify, delete, 
read) to APP. But it is not straight forward
to map tagging, commenting, rating, log access, versioning features to 
APP. We can solve some of these
issues by considering all above "things" as resources. But we have to 
decide how we are going to perform
all the methods exposed in the Registry interface using APP in detailed 
level. If it does not match well, I think
it is better to invent our own xml format. If we invent our own format 
and properly document it, others can write
clients to access the Registry.

2) Extensible search API

Currently the search API supports queries that return normal resources 
and comments. Its bit tricky to design the
search API for tags and all other possible search results. We can 
support them if we introduce different resource content
types each of those result types. Then we can just fill a resource with 
that content type and return. But I am not sure
whether it is the best way to do it. So I think we can conclude all 
possible result types and decide how to map
each of those as resources.

3) Versioning support for deleting resources and renamings

Currently we don't support above two. Possible options are to clear the 
version history if another resource is put
with the same name or maintain complete versioning for above scenarios 
as well. I would go for the second option,
though it has more work.

IMO, it is better to prioritize on finalizing above issues as they are 
slowing down the Registry development.

Thanks,
Chathura