[DAS2] Re: New problem with content-type header in DAS/2 server responses!

[Chervitz, Steve]

Andrew,

Andrew Dalke <dalke at dalkescientific.com> wrote on 8 Nov 2005:
> My apologies for not tracking what's been going on in the last few
> months.  I'm back now and have time for the next few months to work
> on things.

Great to have you back. I have been focusing on the spec for the past
several weeks but would be glad to have you take the lead on it. We've been
making the retrieval spec a priority and should really focus on getting it
nailed down as soon as possible to allow others to start implementing
clients and servers against it and providing feedback. We haven't talked
about a freeze or release date for it, but maybe we should.

I started going through the open bugs in bugzilla, but only resolved one
(#1796). While going through and cleaning up the retrieval spec, I ran into
other issues that were not in bugzilla that seemed important. One was this
content-type issue that you address here.

I raised some other issues regarding types and feature properties etc. a
couple of weeks ago that I'd like you to chime in on:
http://portal.open-bio.org/pipermail/das2/2005-October/000271.html

The latest message on this thread is:
http://portal.open-bio.org/pipermail/das2/2005-November/000278.html

> So I'll start with this exchange.  I can't find the discussion in the
> mailing list history.
> 
> Why the decision to use "text/xml" for all xml responses?  I read it
> it is so "web browsers can 'just work'".
> 
> What are they supposed to do?  Display the XML as some sort of tree
> structure?  Is that the only thing?
> 
> One thing Allen and I talked about, and he tested, was the ability to
> insert a stylesheet declaration in the XML.  Is this part of the
> reason to switch to using "text/xml"?

Here's the relevant thread for reference:
http://portal.open-bio.org/pipermail/das2/2005-July/000227.html

In your other email on this thread, you said:

> This, btw, suggests a third solution to the problem of letting DAS/2
> and web browser clients both point to the same object - se
> 
> Content-Type: text/xml; das-type=das2xml
> 
> But that's ugly.

This seems like a good solution (and not too ugly IMHO). The das-type value
could be more detailed (e.g., x-das-features+xml). However, I recall that
there were possible problems with this syntax, but can't remember the
details at the moment.

Whatever the solution we decide, we should strive for simplicity. If we ask
too much of servers and clients, that will be an impediment to
implementation and maintenance.

Steve