[ARIN-consult] Automated templates

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

I believe that XML templates submitted through a RESTful API are the
best overall solution. EPP may be useable in part but there could well
be gaps and rather than try to update/influence EPP, I think ARIN is
better off going it alone. On the client side, it is minimal effort to
generate a special ARIN XML format once you have set up what you need to
create filled-in XML templates. I wouldn't want to see delays caused by
problems with EPP.

At its heart, the REST architectural style is about leveraging a
hypermedia and a representation of the resources in an application. XML
addresses the resource aspects, but the hypermedia part is a bit more
subtle and many tools/systems claiming to be RESTful, are not really
what they claim. Because of this, I think that the planned interface
specification should be made public for discussion *BEFORE* development 
work is invested into building it. More info on this issue is available
at
<http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven>

Also, since it will be a REST API, it doesn't need to be narrowly
focused on just template submissions. Since you will be giving URLs to
resources (e.g. a template) there is no reason that the URL used to
address the template could not be a permanent reference to the address
block that was then allocated. In this way, you would end up with most
of a REST API for the whois directory.

--Michael Dillon