(4) About Me

• Ph.D. in Communications Systems [http://dret.net/netdret/publications#wil97b] from ETH Zürich [http://www.ethz.ch/]
• Working on Web Architecture after writing the first Web Technology book (1998) [http://dret.net/netdret/publications#wil98]
• UC Berkeley (2006-2011), working on Service Models for Open Government [http://dret.net/netdret/publications#wil09g]
• EMC (2011-2014), working on transforming software products into service platforms
• Siemens (2014-2015), working on using IoT to build WoT (APIs for Things)
• Joined CA [http://www.ca.com/]'s API Academy [http://www.apiacademy.co/] in 2016 and now all about API Strategy and Design
• Active in the usual places such as Twitter [http://twitter.com/dret], GitHub [http://github.com/dret], my blog [http://dret.typepad.com/dretblog/], LinkedIn [http://www.linkedin.com/in/netdret], and flickr [https://www.flickr.com/photos/dret/]

(5) API Academy [http://www.apiacademy.co/]

• Global Team working on API Strategy and Design topics
  • Matt McLarty [http://www.apiacademy.co/team_member/matt-mclarty/] (Vancouver)
  • Mike Amundsen [http://www.apiacademy.co/team_member/mike-amundsen/] (Cincinnati)
  • Ronnie Mitra [http://www.apiacademy.co/team_member/ronnie-mitra/] (London)
  • Erik Wilde [http://www.apiacademy.co/team_member/erik-wilde/] (Zürich/Berkeley)
• Evangelizing ideas and technologies
  • Speaking (conferences, events)
  • Teaching (workshops, bootcamps)
  • Publishing (blogs, articles, books, podcasts [https://soundcloud.com/user-426834320])
  • Doing (side projects on API-related topics)
  • Standardizing (participating in specification work)

(7) Let's Fix HAL!

(8) Some Examples

{ "_links": {
    "curies": [ { "name": "prefix1", "href": "http://example.com/rel/{rel}" },
                { "name": "prefix2", "href": "http://example.com/rel/{rel}" } ],
    "prefix1:link": { "href": "/example1" },
    "prefix2:link": { "href": "/example2" } }}

{ "_links": {
    "curies": [ { "name": "prefix", "href": "http://example.com/rel/{rel}" } ]},
  "_embedded": { "_links": { "prefix:link": { "href": "/example" } }}}

{ "_links": {
    "curies": [ { "name": "prefix", "href": "http://example.com/rel/{rel}" } ],
    "prefix:link": { "href": "/example" } },
  "_embedded": { "item" : {
    "_links": {
      "curies": [ { "name": "prefix", "href": "http://example.org/rel/{rel}" } ], 
      "prefix:link": { "href": "/example" } }}}}

{ "_embedded": { "item" : [
  { "_links": {
      "curies": [ { "name": "prefix", "href": "http://example.com/rel/{rel}" } ], 
      "prefix:link": { "href": "/example" } }},
  { "_links": {
      "curies": [ { "name": "prefix", "href": "http://example.org/rel/{rel}" } ], 
      "prefix:link": { "href": "/example" } }}]}}

(9) If it's broken, fix it

• HAL needs a bit of housekeeping
  • A HAL CURIE is not a CURIE
  • Embedded resources are underspecified
  • Namespace (CURIE) mechanics are underspecified
• Community consensus on deployed code and design fixes
  • (Some) breakage is unavoidable when fixing broken specifications
  • Make the transition clear (it won't be clean)
  • Provide test suites/tools to help with the transition
• Restart with a new media type or be explicit about legacy issues

(10) The Case of GeoJSON

• Successful community standard with many adopters
  • Specification issues caused interoperability problems
  • Specification status caused adoption issues
• IETF GeoJSON WG [https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/geojson/] with the intentionally narrow goal of fixing it
  • Resist the temptation to add features
  • Fix known problems and produce a widely recognized specification
• RFC 8142 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8142] was published after about a year of work

(11) HAL Call to Action

• Is it worth the effort to "fix HAL"?
• If it is, what would be the best way forward?

(13) Thanks! Q&A

• Slides online: dret.net/lectures/restfest-2017 [http://dret.net/lectures/restfest-2017]
• Slide sources: dret/lectures [http://github.com/dret/lectures/tree/master/restfest-2017] on GitHub [http://github.com/]
• Me: http://dret.net/netdret/ [http://dret.net/netdret/]
• Twitter: @dret [http://twitter.com/dret]