[occi-wg] Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing?

[Cloud Central - Kristoffer Sheather]

Hi Richard,

As a developer coming from an enterprise IT background, .NET in particular, I support an XML rendering of the OCCI protocol.  Whether it should be atom based remains to be seen IMO.  Personally I prefer plain old XML + XML schema.

I think that we need to focus on the model itself primarily, ensuring its kept as abstract as possible whilst still being specific enough to meet requirements.  Once we have the model defined, then we can focus more on the rendering from the model to the data formats.

I do agree that whatever route we take, feature support by each protocol rendering should be lossless, or as lossless as possible.  There should be no first and second class citizens here.

Regards,
Kristoffer Sheather

----------------------------------------

From: Richard Davies <richard at daviesmail.org>
Sent: Thursday, 7 May 2009 12:56 AM
To: Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net>
Subject: Re: [occi-wg] Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing? 

[from discussion Ben Black]
> XML drags along an awful lot of baggage, which has resulted in many folks
> using lighter-weight formats like JSON. ATOM, in turns, lards still more
> baggage into the mix, again
...
> JSON has similarly moved well beyond its origins as something used by
> Javascript (see CouchDB for a great example). Finally, it is a simple,
> text-based system, far simpler than XML, and I have recent, painful
> experience in working in JSON and XML simultaneously for systems
> management.

A man after my own heart ;-)

Seriously, I think the point here is that the Atom XML vs. simple JSON/TXT
discussion is a typical unresolvable programmers' religious war.
To caricature:

- One camp will always believe that Atom XML is more flexible, extensible
and Enterprise-ready, whilst being "simple enough".

- The other camp will always believe that very basic JSON/TXT formats are
much simpler, lower baggage and "flexible/extensible enough".

OCCI will be used by programmers from both camps, so we need to meet both
needs. Luckily on this mailing list we have Sam as a strong advocate of the
first camp, and ElasticHosts as a strong advocate of the second ;-)

As I have said before, my aim is that the XML, JSON and TXT formats should
all share the same nouns, verbs and attributes, and should also be
automatically translatable into each other, but beyond that each should be
well designed in their own right.

ElasticHosts will continue to fight strongly for the second camp in the JSON
and TXT format, whilst deferring on most issues of taste in the XML format.

I'd like to see members of the first camp fighting strongly in the XML
format, but deferring on most issues of taste in the JSON and TXT formats.

Cheers,

Richard.
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