Compact resource and the Prefer header

The OSLC 3 resource preview specification
indicates the MUST honor a client's request using the Prefer header to
in-line a Compact Resource in JSON and RDF representations. 

It also says the servers MAY choose
to return only a subset of the target resource properties when the compact
resource is in-lined. Note a consequence of this is that the Prefer header
can only be used to get the compact resource representation in one request
if the resource itself is an RDF resource. This seems like an unfortunate
and unnecessary restriction.

Why would the Prefer: return=representation;
include="http://open-services.net/ns/core#PreferCompact"
return some unspecified part of the target resource with the Compact Representation
embedded in it in some unspecified way? Is there a scenario/use case that
describes when a client would want some partial representation of a resource
and its compact representation in the same request? 

Should we simplify this and just have
the Prefer header return the compact resource representation and avoid
embedding it in some unspecified subset of the target resource?
 

Jim Amsden, Senior Technical Staff Member
OSLC and Linked Lifecycle Data
919-525-6575