[Chandler-dev] Sharing API type system meeting

[Brian Kirsch]

I would like to attend as well.

I am trying to figure out if there is some way to leverage your Sharing 
format for mail.

If someone wants to Mail a custom item how do we determine how to 
serialize that in a mail format.

There are two options:
1. Each item defines how it is converted to a mail message. I don't like 
this approach since it requires extra work on the developers part and an 
understanding of RFC2882.

2. Use a common serialization format which the Mail Service layer can 
use to determine how to convert the Item. This would be the preferred 
method.


-Brian

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> I'd like for us to meet on Thursday, September 14th, at 3pm PST to 
> discuss the type system for the sharing external information model 
> between Chandler and Cosmo.  Morgen and Brian Moseley have both 
> proposed using XSD, but I think we need to narrow the field a little, 
> since XSD is much broader than what either the Chandler or Cosmo 
> backends can actually accept at this point in time.  So, I don't field 
> comfortable making the spec allow you to just throw in there whatever 
> types XSD allows.  We should at least narrow it down to the subset of 
> XSD that each backend can comfortably support, even if we use the XSD 
> model for specifying types.
>
> However, we could also just as easily use a very strict concrete 
> typing based on SQL types, or just list out what types and variations 
> thereof we will allow in the current version, and how we will 
> communicate that type information.
>
> So the first goal of the meeting is to decide "what types we care 
> about", in the sense of both the specific types themselves, and what 
> *distinctions* between types are necessary.  For example, the Chandler 
> repository doesn't care about how big a Text field is, but SQL 
> databases usually do, and often make a distinction between short text 
> and long "memo" types at a smaller size than one would usually care 
> about in Chandler before switching to a blob type.
>
> Another similar distinction is numeric precision, since SQL databases 
> tend to use fixed decimal places to describe their numeric types, vs. 
> the way Python and Java effectively use numbers of bits.
>
> So, we should establish what distinctions are critical, and then from 
> there decide whether to use an XSD subset, an SQL-like type/precision 
> notation, a fixed set of predefined types without any variation 
> allowed, or something else altogether.
>
> Of course, if we can answer these questions via email before Thursday 
> and don't have to have a meeting, that's even better.  :)
>
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "chandler-dev" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-dev

-- 
Brian Kirsch 
Internationalization Architect / Mail Service Engineer
Open Source Applications Foundation
543 Howard Street 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
http://www.osafoundation.org