Network Working Group                                           E. Wilde
Internet-Draft                                         December 28, 2018
Intended status: Informational
Expires: July 1, 2019


                  Link Relation Types for Web Services
                    draft-wilde-service-link-rel-09

Abstract

   Many resources provided on the Web are part of sets of resources that
   are provided in a context that is managed by one particular service
   provider.  Often, these sets of resources are referred to as "Web
   Services" or "Web APIs".  This specification defines link relations
   for representing relationships from those resources to ones that
   provide documentation, descriptions, or metadata for these Web
   services.  Documentation is primarily intended for human consumers,
   whereas descriptions are primarily intended for automated consumers;
   metadata is supposed to be information about a service's context.  It
   also defines a link relation to identify status resources that are
   used to represent operational information about service status.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on July 1, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of



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   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Web Services  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Documenting Web Services  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  Describing Web Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.3.  Unified Documentation/Description . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Link Relations for Web Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.1.  The service-doc Link Relation Type  . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.2.  The service-desc Link Relation Type . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.3.  The service-meta Link Relation Type . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   5.  Web Service Status Resources  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.1.  Link Relation Type: service-doc . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.2.  Link Relation Type: service-desc  . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     6.3.  Link Relation Type: service-meta  . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     6.4.  Link Relation Type: status  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   One of the defining aspects of the Web is that it is possible to
   interact with Web resources without any prior knowledge of the
   specifics of the resource.  Following Web Architecture
   [W3C.REC-webarch-20041215] by using URIs, HTTP, and media types, the
   Web's uniform interface allows interactions with resources without
   the more complex binding procedures often necessary with other
   approaches.

   Many resources on the Web are provided as part of a set of resources
   that are referred to as a "Web Service" or a "Web API".  In many
   cases, these services or APIs are defined and managed as a whole, and
   it may be desirable for clients to be able to discover this service
   information.




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   Service information that provides information on how to use service
   resources can be broadly separated into two categories: One category
   is primarily targeted for human users and often uses generic
   representations for human readable documents, such as HTML or PDF.
   The other category is structured information that follows some more
   formalized description model, and is primarily intended for
   consumption by machines, for example for tools and code libraries.

   In the context of this memo, the human-oriented variant is referred
   to as "documentation", and the machine-oriented variant is referred
   to as "description".

   These two categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as there
   are representations that have been proposed that are intended for
   both human consumption and interpretation by machine clients.  In
   addition, a typical pattern for service documentation/description is
   that there is human-oriented high-level documentation that is
   intended to put a service in context and explain the general model,
   which is complemented by a machine-level description that is intended
   as a detailed technical description of the service.  These two
   resources could be interlinked, but since they are intended for
   different audiences, it can make sense to provide entry points for
   both of them.

   In addition, while both documentation and descriptions may be
   provided as part of a Web service, there may be other information as
   well.  Generally speaking, a Web service may have any metadata/
   resources associated with it (with documentation/description just
   being two specific kinds of resource).  If there is a way how all of
   these metadata/resources are represented, then it should be possible
   to discover such a resource of general Web service metadata.

   In addition to these resources about mostly static aspects of a Web
   service, this memo also defines a link relation that allows providers
   of a Web service to link to a resource that represents status
   information about the service.  This information often represents
   operational information that allows service consumers to retrieve
   information about "service health" and related issues.

   This memo places no constraints on the specific representations used
   for all of these resources.  It simply allows providers of a Web
   service to make the documentation, description, metadata, and status
   of their services discoverable, and defines link relations that serve
   that purpose.







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2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

3.  Web Services

   "Web Services" or "Web APIs" (sometimes also referred to as "HTTP
   API" or "REST API") are a way to expose information and services on
   the Web. Following the principles of Web architecture
   [W3C.REC-webarch-20041215], they expose URI-identified resources,
   which are then accessed and transferred using a specific
   representation.  Many services use representations that contain
   links, and often these links are typed links.

   Using typed links, resources can identify relationship types to other
   resources.  RFC 8288 [RFC8288] establishes a framework of registered
   link relation types, which are identified by simple strings and
   registered in an IANA registry.  Any resource that supports typed
   links according to RFC 8288 can then use these identifiers to
   represent resource relationships on the Web without having to re-
   invent registered relation types.

   In recent years, Web services as well as their documentation and
   description languages have gained popularity, due to the general
   popularity of the Web as a platform for providing information and
   services.  However, the design of documentation and description
   languages varies with a number of factors, such as the general
   application domain, the preferred application data model, and the
   preferred approach for exposing services.

   This specification allows service providers to use a unified way to
   link to service documentation and/or description.  This link should
   not make any assumptions about the provided type of documentation
   and/or description, so that service providers can choose the ones
   that best fit their services and needs.

   This specification also allows service providers to link to general
   service metadata, which as one part of it may have links to
   documentation and/or description, but potentially can have other
   information about a service as well, such as deployment or
   operational information.






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3.1.  Documenting Web Services

   In the context of this specification, "documentation" refers to
   information that is primarily intended for human consumption.
   Typical representations for this kind of documentation are HTML and
   PDF.

   Documentation is often structured, but the exact kind of
   documentation structure depends on the structure of the service that
   is documented, as well as on the specific way in which the
   documentation authors choose to document it.

3.2.  Describing Web Services

   In the context of this specification, "description" refers to
   information that is primarily intended for machine consumption.
   Typical representations for this are dictated by the technology
   underlying the service itself, which means that in today's technology
   landscape, description formats exist that are based on XML, JSON,
   RDF, and a variety of other structured data models.  Also, in each of
   those technologies, there may be a variety of languages that are
   defined to achieve the same general purpose of describing a Web
   service.

   Descriptions are always structured, but the structuring principles
   depend on the nature of the described service.  For example, one of
   the earlier service description approaches, the Web Services
   Description Language (WSDL), uses "operations" as its core concept,
   which are essentially identical to function calls, because the
   underlying model is based on that of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
   model.  Other description languages for non-RPC approaches to
   services will use different structuring approaches, such as
   structuring service descriptions by URIs and/or URI patterns.

3.3.  Unified Documentation/Description

   If service providers use an approach where there is no distinction
   between service documentation (Section 3.1) and service description
   (Section 3.2), then they may not feel the need to use two separate
   links.  In such a case, an alternative approach is to use the
   previously defined "service" link relation type [RFC5023], which has
   no indication of whether it links to documentation or description,
   and thus may be a better fit if no such differentiation is required.








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4.  Link Relations for Web Services

   In order to allow Web services to represent the relation of
   individual resources to service documentation/description and
   metadata, this specification introduces and registers three new link
   relation types.

4.1.  The service-doc Link Relation Type

   The "service-doc" link relation type is used to represent the fact
   that a resource or a set of resources are documented at a specific
   URI.  The target resource is expected to provide documentation that
   is primarily intended for human consumption.

4.2.  The service-desc Link Relation Type

   The "service-desc" link relation type is used to represent the fact
   that a resource or a set of resources are described at a specific
   URI.  The target resource is expected to provide a service
   description that is primarily intended for machine consumption.  In
   many cases, it is provided in a representation that is consumed by
   tools, code libraries, or similar components.

4.3.  The service-meta Link Relation Type

   The "service-meta" link relation type is used to link to available
   metadata for the service context of a resource.  Service metadata is
   any kind of data that may be of interest to existing or potential
   service users, with documentation/description only being two possible
   facets of service metadata.  The target resource is expected to
   provide a service description that is primarily intended for machine
   consumption.  In many cases, it is provided in a representation that
   is consumed by tools, code libraries, or similar components.

   Since service metadata can be for many different purposes, and use
   many different representations, it may make sense for representations
   using the "service-meta" link relation to add additional hints about
   the specific kind or format of metadata that is being linked.  This
   definition of the "service-meta" link relation makes no specific
   assumptions about how these link hints will be represented, and the
   specific mechanism will depend on the context where the "service-
   meta" link relation is being used.

   One example for this is that a "service-desc" link may identify an
   OpenAPI description, which is supposed to be the machine-readable
   description of a Web API.  A "service-meta" link may identify a
   resource that contains additional metadata about the Web API, such as
   labels that classify the API according to a labeling scheme, and a



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   privacy policy that makes statements about how the Web API manages
   personally identifiable information.

5.  Web Service Status Resources

   Web services providing access to one or more resources often are
   hosted and operated in an environment for which status information
   may be available.  This information may be as simple as confirming
   that a service is operational, or may provide additional information
   about different aspects of a service, and/or a history of status
   information, possibly listing incidents and their resolution.

   The "status" link relation type can be used to link to such a status
   resource, allowing service consumers to retrieve status information
   about a Web service's status.  Such a link may not be available for
   and from all resources provided by a Web service, but from key
   resources such as a Web service's metadata resource and/or a
   service's home resource (i.e., a resource analogous to the home page
   of a Web site).

   This memo does not restrict the representation of a status resource
   in any way.  It may be primarily focused on human or machine
   consumption, or a combination of both.  It may be a simple "traffic
   light" indicator for service health, or a more sophisticated
   representation conveying more detailed information such as service
   subsystems and/or a status history.

6.  IANA Considerations

   The link relation types below have been registered by IANA per
   Section 4.2 of RFC 8288 [RFC8288]:

6.1.  Link Relation Type: service-doc

      Relation Name: service-doc

      Description: Identifies service documentation for the context that
      is primarily intended for human consumption.

      Reference: [[ This document ]]

6.2.  Link Relation Type: service-desc

      Relation Name: service-desc

      Description: Identifies service description for the context that
      is primarily intended for consumption by machines.




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      Reference: [[ This document ]]

6.3.  Link Relation Type: service-meta

      Relation Name: service-meta

      Description: Identifies general metadata for the context that is
      primarily intended for consumption by machines.

      Reference: [[ This document ]]

6.4.  Link Relation Type: status

      Relation Name: status

      Description: Identifies a resource that represents the context's
      status.

      Reference: [[ This document ]]

7.  Security Considerations

   Web service providers should be aware that service descriptions and
   documentation may be used by attackers to gain additional information
   about a service (and in particular its implementation), and to test
   for known security issues.  It may thus be advisable to keep service
   descriptions and documentation to those aspects of a service that are
   necessary to use the service, and to exclude any details that are not
   necessary for using the service.

   Another potential security issue for Web service providers is that
   publishing service descriptions and documentation may generally allow
   clients (both malicious and otherwise) a more automated and
   systematic access to a service.  It may therefore be possible that
   more of a service's potential vulnerabilities are made easier to find
   and exploit, or simply that a service might receive more load because
   it is accessed by automated clients.

   Web service consumers should be aware that service descriptions and
   documentation can be out of sync or simply incorrect.  Blindly
   trusting service descriptions and documentation (in particular when
   descriptions are retrieved and interpreted programmatically) is not a
   safe practice.  Web service consumers SHOULD always assume that
   service descriptions and documentation may be incorrect, and SHOULD
   therefore be prepared to handle errors at runtime.






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8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8288]  Nottingham, M., "Web Linking", RFC 8288,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8288, October 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8288>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC5023]  Gregorio, J., Ed. and B. de hOra, Ed., "The Atom
              Publishing Protocol", RFC 5023, DOI 10.17487/RFC5023,
              October 2007, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5023>.

   [W3C.REC-webarch-20041215]
              Jacobs, I. and N. Walsh, "Architecture of the World Wide
              Web, Volume One", World Wide Web Consortium
              Recommendation REC-webarch-20041215, December 2004,
              <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webarch-20041215>.

Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks for comments and suggestions provided by Mike Amundsen, Oliver
   Gierke, Sebastien Lambla, and Darrell Miller.

Author's Address

   Erik Wilde

   Email: erik.wilde@dret.net
   URI:   http://dret.net/netdret/













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