[Bridget Almas]

Notes from today’s Web Conference:
Next Meeting: 8 November 13:00 GMT (https://www.rd-alliance.org/group/research-data-collections-wg/event/res…)
Action Items:

All to review and provide feedback on Frederik’s proposed list of properties https://github.com/RDACollectionsWG/apidocs/wiki/Collections-and-Service…
Bridget to incorporate feedback on API into swagger spec
Bridget, Tobias, Alex to look at possibility of using Connexions (Flask/Python) for functional implementation

Discussion Notes:
The majority of the meeting focused on feedback on the API. We agreed upon the following changes during the call:

Rename /capabilities to /features (service level features)
Semantics of combining Filter parameters: we will support AND semantics across filters and OR semantics for values within a filter param (multiple occurrences of same parameter in URL params)
Either introduce PATCH for /collections/{id}/members/{mid} -or- PUT and DELETE for updating individual collection properties
We need to look into additional HTTP headers (if-matches etc.) and add to specification. (Using them may also solve some of PATCH-related discussion.)
We need to look into recommendations for server-side implementation on how to prevent users from accidentally overwriting metadata? Explicit confirms, checked preconditions?
Agreed upon developing a functional demonstrator in Python.

no good experience with code generators based on a Swagger doc; causes more work than it saves
will look into connexion package – does it save us work or is it too much overhead? is it straightforward to use, documented, maintained…?

Filter parameter names and details still need work, pending decisions on the property names

Alex asks if Filterby is redundant

Additional API discussion items for which we postponed decisions:

Should the MappingMetadata remain as a dedicated structure within the item properties or should it be flattened?

Nice to keep as it relates back to the conceptual discussions.
Alex: May make it easier to distinguish extensible from static parts; mapping can be extended, the other parameters are on a static level.

Discussion on how much of the API is mandatory.

The mandatory minimum is visible through the service features; if everything that’s considered optional there is left out, the “core” remains. Not clear whether it is too complex to implement and discourages potential adopters.
In any case, the relationship between these individual features and their parts in methods/method parameters is not visible yet. No defined way to do it in Swagger, so probably ends up in documentation texts.

Other Discussion Points:

Thomas to add the dummy prototype developed for P8 to the GitHub organization

Discussion