[Reportbug-maint] Bug#590214: OSLC-CM discussion - Was: Re: Bug#590214: support for submitting bug reports via http

[Olivier Berger]

Ciao Sandro.

Le mercredi 28 juillet 2010 à 09:26 +0200, Sandro Tosi a écrit :
> Hello Olivier,
> 
>         > May I suggest that it would be great if debbugs was to
>         support a standard like OSLC-CM for bug submission through
>         REST POSTs (through HTTP/HTTPs) and reportbug would speak this
>         standard as a client.
>         
> so you should have sent this comment to 590269, where it's actually
> requested the http submission feature in debbugs, not on the reportbug
> bug, that's downstream of 590269.
> 

That's what I thought I had done... using bts --mbox show 590269
but I was tricked by the automatic proposal to CC 590214 :-(... anyway,
the principle is that both server (debbugs) and client (reportbug)
should speak the same language, so that's not completely off-topic...
it's just that the server is more concerned by interoperability with
more clients probably.

Thanks for fixing and CC-ing the proper debbugs one.

>         > See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=565513
>         which already proposed some ideas regarding OSLC-CM.
>         >
>         > IMHO, REST offers many advantages over SOAP in this respect
>         (including the ability to interlink bugs using linked-data
>         approach), and OSLC-CM may some day become a standard for
>         interoperability between bugtrackers, so other tools than
>         reportbug could be used too (more likely candidate so far :
>         Mylyn in Eclipse).
>         
> Anyhow, I find it rather odd to call OSLC-CM "standard" or "more
> standard than SOAP", since I've never heard of it, and I worked a lot
> on interoperability between heterogeneous systems, where I find SOAP
> (or plain REST) a lot more usable than any other rich format.

In can understand your point as I've been myself working on bugtracker
interoperability for years and only heard about OSLC-CM one year only
after they had started to elaborate the process.

The fact that you never heard of OSLC-CM is probably related to you not
noticing my numerous posts about it ;), but more seriously, because it
has mainly been elaborated by big proprietary vendors.

Notice I haven't called it "more standard than SOAP". It's just that it
has all properties of a good standard, i.e. a specs which propose some
properties, and not just one instance of an API of a particular tool.

But in any case, I think *if* one thinks about designing a new API, and
REST is an option, then I would definitely *advise* to check OSLC-CM [0]
instead of reinventing another wheel. If the properties of OSLC-CM don't
fit, then... ok... but just because you ignore something doesn't dismiss
it I guess... OK, then, now you know about it, if you don't like it,
period.

>  The
> lower the entry level, the easier for tools & people to adapt to it.
> SOAP it's already available on BTS side, so it has definitely and
> advantage over others.
> 

Sure. The point is just, with a (proposed) standard, the couple
reportbug + debbugs may not be the only tools that can implement some
connection between each-other, and adopting OSLC-CM may help foster
interoperability with other tools that (will) speak OSLC-CM (like
Mylyn).

> Anyhow, it's a decision debbugs owner has to take, and so this is only
> a comment; i'll just use what will be available.

Sure, one has to implement something... and the rest is void... only,
now, you are aware that OSLC-CM exists ;)

My 2 cents,

Best regards,
-- 
Olivier BERGER <olivier.berger at it-sudparis.eu>
http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingénieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut TELECOM, SudParis (http://www.it-sudparis.eu/), Evry (France)