Representationsoffer

Representationsoffer is a concept in data interoperability and API design describing a mechanism by which a resource can publicly offer multiple representations to clients. It complements content negotiation by formalizing the catalog of available encodings, schemas, and language variants that a provider can deliver for a given resource. The term is often used in documentation about service design, knowledge graphs, and distributed systems to emphasize that representation choices are negotiable rather than fixed.

In practice, a representationsoffer comprises metadata that lists the available representations, including media types, serialization formats, schemas, languages, and version identifiers. Clients indicate preferred representations via request headers, query parameters, or negotiation tokens. The service then selects the best match and returns the representation, or signals that no acceptable option is available.

Implementation approaches vary. Some systems publish a formal representation catalog or an offer graph that maps representations to resource URLs; others implement implicit negotiation through standard HTTP content negotiation, with structured fallbacks. A representationsoffer can support heterogeneous data models, such as JSON-LD, RDF/XML, or custom domain formats, and may also control provenance, licensing, or access constraints per representation.

Examples and usage. In REST APIs, representationsoffer might expose a resource with JSON, XML, and Turtle serializations. In knowledge graphs, a node might be available in several ontology-bound serializations. In software delivery, libraries may provide artifacts in multiple package formats stacked as optional representations.

See also content negotiation, media type, API design, semantic web, provenance, versioning.