[Esip-discovery] open search extensions

[jeff mcwhirter]

Hi Chris,

>     I think on the one hand, some of us don't want to give up the simplicity of the OpenSearch framework, or its basis on a widely used de facto standard.  But on the
Agreed as to simplicity however, if we look at the kind of search 
interfaces that are actually in use in the geoinformatics community they 
are rarely simple. They aren't complicated by design (well sometimes 
:-)) but rather the domain and the end user's needs are complex.  
OpenSearch is simple because the domain where it arose from (search 
engines, commerce) tends to have simple search needs - mostly text. In 
geoinformatics we have complex geospatial, temporal, and metadata 
information that should be exposed.
> other hand, for extending our OpenSearch framework, the ability to type additional attributes could be helpful.  Is it possible to fold your ideas into the OpenSearch framework?  For instance, we might establish a convention that the namespace documents that we reference for extended query or response attributes be dereferencible documents in a specific format, with the typing information included therein.
Yes, there could be an extension which is a typed capabilities extension.

I'd suggest before we jump into this lets use the GSAC as a testbed for 
these ideas. As I mentioned we have 4 implementations of the API using 
capabilities and soon will have a 5th. Perhaps some folks in the 
community would like to work with us on this to see how these ideas fit 
into their repositories?

Also, we have built a generic repository interface (the GSL) that with 
some refactoring we could make even more generic and pull out the 
capabilities piece as a stand-alone and resuable library so others could 
make use of it.  Likewise, one thing I've thought of doing is a 
javascript package that knows how to read and process a capabilities (or 
an opensearch capabilities extension) and generate a search interface 
directly in the browser.

-Jeff