Automating the restaurant example

(time for a subject line change ...)

Hi David,

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 11:25:13AM -0700, Burdett, David wrote:
> I really would like to see explained an example of how to do peer-to-peer,
> i.e. without a human being involved, in a way that does not need to
> standardize messages. I also challenged Paul to do this in the email at [3].

Ok, let's automate the restaurant example.  Say there isn't a waiter,
just a service out there on the 'net, identified by a URI;

http://restaurant.example.org

My agent, to which I've given permission to act on my behalf to order
me a hamburger, finds this URI through some means (UDDI, Google, etc..),
invokes GET, and sees some XML that describes a menu of what's available
for order, including a declaration that all orders should be submitted
to http://restaurant.example.org/order/.  So my agent produces an order
document with a hamburger, and credit card info, then POSTs it to that
latter URI.

Here, all that needs standardizing (that isn't already standardized) is
an XML schema for a menu, and an XML schema for an order.  I'm also not
considering RDF, which could simplify that somewhat, so that agreement
on what constitutes an order and a menu doesn't have to be all or
nothing (ala partial understanding[1]).

 [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-webarch-extlang-19980210

MB
-- 
Mark Baker, CTO, Idokorro Mobile.  Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.
http://www.markbaker.ca             http://www.idokorro.com