Are event types necessary?

[swcurran]

A trivial question, but are the event types of create/update/deactivate really needed? They are pretty implicit -- first, last and all others. I guess deactivate is a bit tricky, but seems like a lot of overhead for very little.

[msporny]

Yes, that's an open question. We had types for logs, events, and operations... and removed the types for logs and events, but kept them for operations.

Fundamentally, it's a layering question -- do the types of events go at the application layer (in the data field)? Or do they go up a level?

One use case we are exploring is the idea that you can have multiple operations per event, where you might create two data objects with different IDs (remember it's the application's state machine that handles how those two objects change over time... or if a third one springs into existence a week from when the second object came into existence). So, you might "create" multiple objects over time... create isn't only the first operation performed... it might also happen during the 50th operation.

Again, this feels like it would add complexity to the spec (and it's not clear we need it).