Yahoo! techie Jeremy Zawodny has posted his thoughts and suggestions on RSS auto discovery stating It has occurred to me that there's some non-existent infrastructure that we (whoever 'we' really is) need to build if RSS is going to really, really take off the way it should.
He has also started threads on the syndication and aggregators mailing lists. Diego Doval contributes with some experiments using OPML and RSS.
I think whatever becomes of this directory format be inclusive of many of the formats that feeds exist in RSS x.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Echo in addition to Web services.
From my own experience and others the OPML/blogroll formats are all over the place. (See Meg Hourihan recent post on the subject for more.) There really was never a specification to my knowledge. Being frozen and not supporting proper (read: determinable) extensibility, I'm not in favor of pursuing anything based on OPML or existing blogroll
formats.
Joe Gregorio posted a suggestion to use link tags which seems fine, but it doesn't seem scalable. Won't I have to repeat all of that information in every one of my HTML pages? Won't that be a major pain for some like Yahoo that could have hundreds of these? Perhaps I'm reading it incorrectly.
While everyone is throwing out ideas I figured I may as well unearth this post for some additional food for thought: WSIL meets RSS.
WSIL is Web Services Inspection Language. It seems right in line with what Jeremy and others are talking about. WSIL may not exactly be the ticket since its an under utilized and seemingly abandoned specification – then again wasn't that the case for RSS?
Here is a topline of the case I made then:
- I have asserted that RSS syndication feeds are Web services and perhaps the most widely deployed Web services across the Internet.
- In many ways, WSIL is like RSS for Web services. RSS is a file format with pointers to published content that can be syndicated and aggregated. WSIL is a file format with references to published Web services that can be discovered and bound.
- I find WSIL intriguing because of its simplicity and lightweight implementation is more RESTful then UDDI. WSIL leaves the processing logic to the developer and makes its information trivial to access creating the potential for innovative and novel applications arise.
Back when I wrote the afore mentioned post I created a few quick and rough samples to get my point across. Here are the links:
http://www.timaoutloud.org/index.wsil (Extended)
http://www.timaoutloud.org/index2.wsil (Traditional)
http://www.timaoutloud.org/index-rsd.wsil (RSD-like)
One of WSIL's nifty traits is that it can point to other WSIL files which can be helpful with large and distributed sites. For example using Troy Hakala's case Yahoo! could have a main WSIL file, www.yahoo.com/index.wsil, that cover their primary feeds and points to other sections WSIL files like sports.yahoo.com/index.wsil and finance.yahoo.com/index.wsil and so on. Another benefit, if Yahoo! would introduce some Web service interfaces, they too could be included in these files for applications to auto discover.
Just thinking outloud.
<p>Yahoo! techie Jeremy Zawodny has <a href="http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000967.html">posted</a> his thoughts and suggestions on RSS auto discovery stating <q>It has occurred to me that there's some non-existent infrastructure that we (whoever 'we' really is) need to build if RSS is going to really, really take off the way it should.</q> He has also started threads on the <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/3982">syndication</a> and <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/message/567">aggregators</a> mailing lists. <a href="http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002324.html">Diego Doval contributes</a> with some experiments using OPML and RSS.</p>
<p>I think whatever becomes of this directory format be inclusive of many of the formats that feeds exist in RSS x.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Echo in addition to Web services. </p>
<p>From my own experience and others the OPML/blogroll formats are all over the place. (See <a href="http://www.megnut.com/technology/007388.asp">Meg Hourihan recent post on the subject</a> for more.) There really was never a specification to my knowledge. Being frozen and not supporting proper (read: determinable) extensibility, I'm not in favor of pursuing anything based on OPML or existing <q>blogroll</q> formats.</p>
<p>Joe Gregorio <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/message/575">posted a suggestion</a> to use link tags which seems fine, but it doesn't seem scalable. Won't I have to repeat all of that information in every one of my HTML pages? Won't that be a major pain for some like Yahoo that could have hundreds of these? Perhaps I'm reading it incorrectly.</p>
<p>While everyone is throwing out ideas I figured I may as well unearth this post for some additional food for thought: <a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/archives/000170.html">WSIL meets RSS.</a></p>
<p>WSIL is Web Services Inspection Language. It seems right in line with what Jeremy and others are talking about. WSIL may not exactly be the ticket since its an under utilized and seemingly abandoned specification – then again wasn't that the case for RSS?</p>
<p>Here is a topline of the case I made then:</p>
<ul>
<li>I have asserted that RSS syndication feeds are Web services and perhaps the most widely deployed Web services across the Internet. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>In many ways, WSIL is like RSS for Web services. RSS is a file format with pointers to published content that can be syndicated and aggregated. WSIL is a file format with references to published Web services that can be discovered and bound. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I find WSIL intriguing because of its simplicity and lightweight implementation is more RESTful then UDDI. WSIL leaves the processing logic to the developer and makes its information trivial to access creating the potential for innovative and novel applications arise. </li>
</ul>
<p>Back when I wrote the afore mentioned post I created a few quick and rough samples to get my point across. Here are the links:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/index.wsil">http://www.timaoutloud.org/index.wsil</a> (Extended)<br /><a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/index2.wsil">http://www.timaoutloud.org/index2.wsil</a> (Traditional)<br /><a href="http://www.timaoutloud.org/index-rsd.wsil">http://www.timaoutloud.org/index-rsd.wsil</a> (RSD-like)</p>
<p>One of WSIL's nifty traits is that it can point to other WSIL files which can be helpful with large and distributed sites. For example using <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/message/574">Troy Hakala's case</a> Yahoo! could have a main WSIL file, www.yahoo.com/index.wsil, that cover their primary feeds and points to other sections WSIL files like sports.yahoo.com/index.wsil and finance.yahoo.com/index.wsil and so on. Another benefit, if Yahoo! would introduce some Web service interfaces, they too could be included in these files for applications to auto discover.</p>
<p>Just thinking outloud.</p>
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