[OAI-implementers] SOAP-PMH

[Martijn Faassen]

Hussein Suleman wrote:
> hi Joseph
> 
> some thoughts ...
> 
> on a technical level, it makes sense that if there is to be a new 
> version of OAI-PMH it should probably be layered over a (RESTful) SOAP.

I wouldn't want this to happen. It means suddenly harvesters will need 
to support SOAP (RESTful SOAP seems to be an oxymoron). This is a much 
heaviever burden for implementors; right now you only need XML 
processing libraries and URL capabilities, not full SOAP support. 
Debuggability with SOAP would also go down a lot.

I'd rather have the protocol evolve into a more RESTish direction 
myself, starting by the putting all verbs behind different URLs. Then 
you can have a single entry point url which delivers a bit of XML 
describing where all the other verb URLs are. It's probably also 
possible to RESTify things a bit more concerning the individual items, 
giving them each a separate URL.

Regards,

Martijn