AtomPub is both a format and a protocol. And I think that the AtomPub is a natural way to expose data especially also GIS data. I am going to go over how in my opinion GIS data exposed as map services seamlessly falls into the AtomPub data container structure. The figure below illustrates a simplified data container structure in AtomPub.
Its a rare day that a truly good standard comes along. Its an even rarer day that the standard get widely adopted. So the developers of Atom should stand up and take a bow - not only did they hit a home run with the Atom syndication format, they've done it again with the Atom publishing protocol. In case you are not familiar with Atom, the syndication format provides a standard format for saving blog content in XML and the publishing protocol provides a standard API for clients to read, create or update Atom documents stored on servers.
Kurt Cagle of The Burton Group, explores the "RESTful Stack" as an alternative to WS-* web services and looks at the growing importance of standards and technologies such as Atom, the Atom Publishing Protocol, and XQuery. Presented as part of HR-XML's webinar series. see http://www.hr-xml.org/blog
AtomPub is another option to allow you can now log in to your blog with an AtomPub-enabled client and publish, update and delete posts and media files remotely, without needing to log in to the administration section directly. While remote posting has been possible using a number of protocols, AtomPub is a well defined protocol that should promote interoperability. WordPress's AtomPub service address is http://[Blog URL]/wp-app.php/service. Your AtomPub client should be configured to point to that address.
]]>Considering the use of atom as a RESTful replacement for the Mail1.0 protocols is an interesting thought-experiment.
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