[APPS-REVIEW] review of draft-dusseault-http-patch-15

I have been selected as the Applications Area Review Team reviewer for this draft (for background on apps-review, please see http://www.apps.ietf.org/content/applications-area-review-team).

Please resolve these comments along with any other Last Call comments you may receive. Please wait for direction from your document shepherd or AD before posting a new version of the draft.

Document: draft-dusseault-http-patch-15
Reviewer: Eliot Lear
Review Date: October 28, 2009

Review Summary:

This draft is almost ready for publication as a Proposed Standard, but should address the one major design issue below before proceeding.

Document Summary:

This document specifies an additional HTTP method, PATCH, which operates on a URI in a manner specific to document type.

Major Issues:

There is precisely one key design decision in this document that seems to me at all controversial:
Is media-type the appropriate key to determine the appropriate PATCH method? Is that level of indirection correct? This immediately limits the number of PATCH methods per media-type to one, and seems to me to provide a difficult route to change the PATCH method. For example, suppose patch(1) became the standard for text/plain, and a new more expressive diff/patch came along. How would that be communicated between client and server? Let's assume for the moment that using a new media-type is not the best solution.

Minor issues:

No matter how the authors answer the above question, I would suggest that an additional IANA registry for PATCH methods be created. The structure of that registry, however, will depend on the answer to the above.

Nits:

Section 2, 3rd para, last sentence:

i.e., new resources may be
   created, or existing ones modified, by the application of a PATCH

or removed?