{"id":192,"date":"2003-10-15T06:02:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-15T10:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/wp\/?p=121"},"modified":"2003-10-15T06:02:00","modified_gmt":"2003-10-15T10:02:00","slug":"david-orchard-on-humans-and-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/2003\/10\/david-orchard-on-humans-and-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"David Orchard on humans and the Web"},"content":{"rendered":"

David wrote an\narticle on the BEA site<\/a>,\nthat, to its credit, confronts the issue (and IMO, mistaken assumption of so many);\nthat the Web is for humans. He writes;<\/p>\n\n

\n
\nIt turns out that humans are pretty darned smart. We can figure out a variety of interactions such as:\n\n    * How to enter usernames and passwords into different pages\n    * When to stop waiting for a page to return and resubmit the request\n    * When timed out of a site, how to reenter data and get to the right pages\n    * How to enter an e-mail address in a Web form, and then switch over to the e-mail client to view the resulting e-mail message\n    * What ordering (or flow) of Web pages to go through to achieve a task\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
Dave’s correct that humans are pretty darned smart, and also when he\nlater suggests that machine-to-machine integration requires additional\nstandards because of this.  But he’s mistaken if he believes (and I know\nhe does 8-) that this requires disregarding REST’s\nuniform interface constraint<\/a>.\nAllow me to run through that list to demonstrate …<\/p>\n\n
How to enter usernames and passwords into different pages<\/em>.  For the\nspecific case of user names & passwords, the Web already has a\nstandard<\/a> for that.  For the more\ngeneral case of entering any data, I agree that a standard is missing.  That’s why\nI developed RDF Forms<\/a>, but\nsomething like WIDL<\/a> could also be\nused.<\/p>\n\n
When to stop waiting for a page to return and resubmit the request<\/em>.  I\ncan’t imagine a scenario where you’d need a standard for this.  If the system were\nstateless, then time is immaterial.  I would expect that what is most important\nwould be that when you do resubmit, that the expectation about invocation\nsemantics are explicit, e.g. “once and only once”, “idempotent”, “safe”, etc…  I\nagree that standardization is required here\n(though not as much as you\nmight expect<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n
When timed out of a site, how to reenter data and get to the right pages<\/em>.\nThis sounds like a combination of the previous two, but I should also mention that\nRDF Forms uses “link metadata” (i.e. type information adorning a hyperlink, such\nas <PurchaseOrder rdf:about=”http:\/\/…”\/>) that can be used by automata to\n“get to the right pages”.<\/p>\n\n
How to enter an e-mail address in a Web form, and then switch over to the e-mail\nclient to view the resulting e-mail message<\/em>.  Much like the first one above regarding\ndata entry, but I’m not sure what “switch over to the e-mail client” means; surely my automata\nisn’t going to be using the Outlook GUI\/app, it’ll be using some email client library\nor an HTTP proxy to an MTA.<\/p>\n\n
What ordering (or flow) of Web pages to go through to achieve a task<\/em>.\nThat’s where “hypermedia as the engine of application state” comes in, as hypermedia\nis your application model.  Link metadata is key here too; I talked about this in\n“Hypermedia Workflow”<\/a>.\nBut I do<\/em> think some more standardization is required, specifically in the\narea of link metadata describing useful workflow abstractions such as rendezvous\n(none of the RESTful integration work I’ve done has required a workflow component\nother than vanilla hypermedia, so I can’t say with certainty what needs to be\nstandardized).<\/p>\n\n
Thanks to Dave for mentioning this, because it’s been such a long standing\nassumption that most Web services proponents would consider it unworthy of\ndiscussion.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David wrote an article on the BEA site, that, to its credit, confronts the issue (and IMO, mistaken assumption of so many); that the Web is for humans. He writes; It turns out that humans are pretty darned smart. We can figure out a variety of interactions such as: * How to enter usernames and […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.markbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}