[mdx] returning the "all entities" aggregate

[Tom Scavo]

Hi,

I'm looking at this semi-documented issue:

https://github.com/iay/md-query/issues/11

The issue seems to be characterized as an implementation issue but I'm
more interested in how this will be incorporated into the spec. Would
someone care to speculate as to the wording that might be used?

We are bringing up an mdq-server as we speak but I don't really want
to equate the "all entities" aggregate with the base URL since users
will end up pulling back the aggregate quite by accident, and such a
mistake is not without consequences since obviously the aggregate can
be quite large.

Indeed, in the end I would prefer not to serve *any* aggregates from
the mdq-server since that drastically alters the required capabilities
of the server. A server that serves only per-entity metadata would
seem to have very modest server requirements, I think. (I have no data
to back this up, I'm just claiming something that appears to me to be
obvious.)

So, if you want to map the base URL to the "all entities" aggregate,
that's fine with me as long as any given deployment is free to return
a 404 response. Better yet, I would rather return a 400 response and
define a tag that implies "all entities," but in any case, a
deployment should not be required to support it.

Tom