Re: [apps-discuss] +exi

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

Restarting this thread to get closure...

On 11/15/11 8:21 PM, Zach Shelby wrote:
> On Nov 16, 2011, at 11:06 AM, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
> 
>> * Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>>> So, let's say I have "foo" data that can be represented in either
>>> plain old XML or as EXI. If I send that "foo" data as plain old
>>> XML, the "application/foo+xml" media type is right. If I send
>>> that "foo" data as EXI, the "application/foo+exi" media type
>>> seems wrong, and so does the "application/exi" media type (just
>>> as "application/xml" would not be right for the first encoding).
>>> Sure, I don't particularly want to duplicate all "+xml" entries
>>> with "+exi" entries, but I don't think that every protocol or
>>> community that sends around XML data will also send around
>>> EXI-encoded data.
>> 
>> The idea is that "EXI" is more like "gzip", so with HTTP you would
>> do
>> 
>> Content-Type: application/foo+xml Content-Encoding: exi
>> 
>> As you would for gzip-compressed content.
> 
> Ouch, don't do that.
> 
> The main interest right now for EXI is in constrained networks, and
> in particular over CoAP. We don't have support for indicating
> content-encoding in CoAP. Besides, the current media type for EXI is
> application/exi. Thus it would make perfect sense to have +exi
> entries. Furthermore, EXI is totally different than gzip, which is a
> generic encoding that can be applied to anything. EXI can be applied
> only to XML objects, and in particular EXI is often used in a schema
> mode where it is only applicable to a single schema. Thus the form
> application/schema+exi makes even more sense, as that EXI format is
> actually specific to that particular schema and the media type tells
> you everything that is needed to decode the representation.

I chatted with a few folks about this in Taipei and afterward.

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), EXI has two modes:

1. Straight compression of the text representation of XML (text in,
EXI-compressed data out). To make use of the data, you then decompress
it back into the angle-brackety text representation of XML that we all
know and love.

2. Direct, binary representation of the XML infoset. In this case, you
never have the data in a angle-brackety text representation, instead it
is always a binary representation.

It seems to me that #1 is similar to gzip, i.e., the textual
representation is encoded using EXI compression, so we'd have this:

   Content-Type: application/foo+xml
   Content-Encoding: exi

It seems to me that #2 might not be an encoding of the relevant +xml
content type, but might be a different content type, so +exi might be
appropriate.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/