[occi-wg] ElasticHosts introduction

[Chris Webb]

Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net> writes:

> Tim Bray (who we'd very > much like to see get on board)
> says<http://twitter.com/timbray/statuses/1396042066>he "
> *Really [doesn't] like the JSON-*or*-XML trend. Adds work, no benefit, pick
> 1*". Perhaps the answer is to require one and provide for others.

Having implemented a cloud infrastructure platform with support for several
data formats, I dispute his claim with evidence! We originally supported
only the simple text/plain KEY VALUE format in our API. Here is the diffstat
from our infrastructure code for the changeset that implemented JSON:

  $ hg export 7c87001589f5 | diffstat
   bin/apiserver |   50 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------
   1 file changed, 31 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)

As you can see, it's a microscopic amount of extra code. I expect an even
smaller diff to be required to add XML. (Nobody's asked for it yet, so we've
prioritised other development: all our test users seemed to prefer plaintext
or JSON at present.)

Of course, it's only easy for us because we have designed our API to be
so simple and direct without excessive abstraction...

Cheers,

Chris.