[occi-wg] Ambiguity regarding Collections

[shlomo.swidler at gmail.com]

[I've been a lurker here since the very beginning of this list. I'm an
end-user, interested in using OCCI to allow me to minimize the vendor
lock-in of my cloud deployments. I have experience in writing and
implementing specs of the JSR kind.]

There seems to me to be some potential ambiguity in the "spec"
regarding collections. I'm referring to the HTML attached [1] to the
most recent Conference Call agenda (which I did not attend, so forgive
me if this was discussed).

The document says:
Operations that return multiple resources (e.g. categories, searches)
are rendered as an Atom feed with an Atom entry per resource.

Does this mean that a conforming implementation can, if there is only
a single resource to return, choose to return it as a collection of
length 1 OR as a "flat" description without Atom wrapping? Or, does it
mean that "operations that, by their nature, can potentially return
multiple resources (such as search) will return these results
enumerated via an Atom feed REGARDLESS of how many results there are"?

.. Shlomo

[1] http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/occi-wg/attachments/20090624/01218d83/attachment-0001.html