[alto] draft-penno-alto-protocol-03 - Use of POST for queries

[Antonio Fusco <antonio2.fusco at telecomitalia.it>]

Hi folks,

I'm giving a deeper look to the ALTO restful interface proposed in the
draft and I'm wondering about the reason to have POST to handle some
kind of queries.
For example, one form of Reverse (pid) Property Lookup is:

Method: POST
URI Path: '/prop/pid/m'
Body: an XML document containing a list of PIDs

Instead, what about something like:

Method: GET
URI Path: '/prop/pid/m'
URI QS Params:'name=[pidname]' (multiplicity: 1..*)
Body: MUST be empty

It looks more restful: in the end these queries are read operations, and
GET is the appropriate method for reads. Furthermore the parameters
needed by the queries are not complex or structured enough to justify
the need of an XML document to represent them: query parameters may
suffice. It also avoids possible confusion that may arise in using the
same XML structure (the one that will be specified in Appendix B.5) for
both request parameters and response body.
Is there any specific reason to need POST with XML body?

Best Regards,
Antonio Fusco

--
_________________________________________________
Telecom Italia
Antonio Fusco
Control, Service Layer & Applications
Service Layer & Messaging Innovation & Engineering
Via Reiss Romoli, 274 10148 Torino
+39 011 228 5124
+39 3316001359


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