Getting the API future-proof as possible before 1.0 release is more
important than backwards compatibility. The main reason I am a
proponent of a bulk_docs api supporting the REST verbs is IMHO it is
easier to use and understand than having multiple API end-points to
accomplish RESTful access in a performant manner. Couch is marketing
itself (among other things) as a RESTful database for web apps, which
is an obvious buzzword and one that I believe will aide in the
adoption of the technology, but the fact is we are having this
discussion because we need more performance than what the RESTful
access is bringing to the table.
So, to the web developer we can say:
"When you only need to access 1-5 documents for you web page, use the
REST api. If you need to get 100 documents, modifiy them and save
them back, then use the bulk_load api to get the documents and the
bulk_docs api to save them, because we are the RESTful database built
for tomorrows web apps"
The message that I believe is more marketable, easier to understand
and use is that you can wrap multiple REST calls into a single request
to the server by POSTing your requests as a JSON payload to the
bulk_docs uri when you want to achieve maximum performance (or
_transaction, or bulk_rest, or any other name).
-- troy
On Aug 5, 2008, at 12:06 PM, Chris Anderson wrote:
On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Paul Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
There was a similar idea posted on another thread that I really
liked,
looked at implementing and got scared of because of the mentioned
replication stuff in bulk docs.
The basic idea was to be able to post something like the following
to _bulk_docs
{
"put": {doc1, doc2, doc3}
"delete": {doc4, doc5}
"get": {doc6}
}
This idea has its upsides, but I'm wary of breaking
backwards-compatibility with _bulk_docs.
However, I don't see anything wrong with the way _bulk_docs currently
handles create/update/delete (even if it isn't RESTful).
On IRC there have been some good arguments in favor of an include_docs
option for view, which could be used with _all_docs and multi-key view
requests to yield the _load_docs (fetch docs in bulk) feature.
Also with that design Tom's original question on this thread would be
a simple case.
--
Chris Anderson
http://jchris.mfdz.com
