[regext] Re: Comments Regarding draft-ietf-regext-rdap-extensions-04

[Tom Harrison <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Oct 03, 2024 at 02:51:47PM +0000, Jasdip Singh wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2024 at 08:19:22AM -0400, Andy Newton wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 02, 2024 at 03:06:26PM +0000, Hollenbeck, Scott wrote:
>>> 2.4.6:
>>> 
>>> "A strict interpretation of this wording where "construction of
>>> the response" refers to the JSON structure only would rule out the
>>> use of Section 2.1.1 extension identifiers, which are in common
>>> use in RDAP.", and "For responses to queries other than "/help", a
>>> response MUST include in the "rdapConformance" array only those
>>> extension identifiers necessary for a client to deserialize the
>>> JSON and understand the semantic meaning of the content within the
>>> JSON, and each extension identifier MUST be free from conflict
>>> with the other identifiers with respect to their syntax and
>>> semantics."
>>> 
>>> I'm a little confused by the text in this section. Is it saying the
>>> profile identifiers should be included in the "rdapConformance"
>>> array, or not? Profile identifiers do serve a valuable purpose in
>>> terms of understanding how the response should be interpreted after
>>> it's been deserialized ("understand the semantic meaning of the
>>> content within the JSON"), so I *think* this text is saying that
>>> they MUST be included. Is that the case?
>> 
>> Yup, that's confusing... and also somewhat contradictory. This was
>> an attempt to clarify the list discussion about what it means to
>> return extension identifiers in the rdapConformance array for non
>> /help queries. Obviously this needs clean up.
>> 
>> As written, this says that only the extensions used to interpret the
>> JSON are to be in rdapConformance. However, the first sentence notes
>> that marker and profile extensions are in common use today, but
>> those don't meet the definition of extensions used to interpret the
>> JSON.
>> 
>> I'd like to know what my co-authors think, but I believe this is
>> overly restrictive as extensions influence more than just the
>> JSON... they also indicate what can be queried and semantics of
>> things like links.
> 
> To Scott’s question about profile/marker identifiers, yes, they
> must be included in the “rdapConformance” array since they
> contribute to the “semantic meaning of the content within the JSON”.
> As for Andy’s point of “also indicate what can be queried”, fair
> enough, the current text does not explicitly say that, but any
> response implies some query to start with. The “semantic meaning”
> phrase also helps cover “semantics of things like links”. But, if
> having some additional text helps clarify these further, sure.

I had the same understanding as Jasdip, i.e. that profile/marker
identifiers are necessary for a client to "understand the semantic
meaning of the content within the JSON".  Maybe a formulation like
"understand the semantic meaning of the response" would work better?

-Tom