Qpid connection URL vs. AMQP host-url

[Alan Conway <ac...@redhat.com>]

The AMQP 0-10 spec defines a URL format (connection.amqp-host-url)
providing only the protocol address details for connecting to a host.
Qpid's Connection URL
http://cwiki.apache.org/qpid/connection-url-format.html defines
additional properties supplied by a client in order to connect (user,
password, vhost etc.) in an open ?name=value options list.

I'd like to propose the following simple extension to the AMQP standard
format to make it as expressive as Qpids connection URL, looking for
feedback from Qpid folks before I do: 

Extend the 0-10 URL grammar by allowing a list of ?name=value options
after the URL. The options may be empty, so this is backwards compatible
with the existing format URLs. The standard shall define a set of
standard options that MUST be recognized corresponding to all the data
items a client needs to send to open a connection (user, vhost,  etc) An
implementation MAY use additional proprietary options and MUST ignore
any options it does not recognize.

This differs from the current Qpid URL as follows: 
 - user, pass, clientid, vhost become options rather values at the front
of the URL
 - brokerlist option is replaced by the existing AMQP URL format, which
specifies a list of brokers & is extensible to new protocols.

It is straightforward to parse both formats since the AMQP url starts
with amqp:[protocol stuff] whereas the Qpid format starts with amqp://

Improvements, objections, alternate suggestions most welcome.  I'd like
to get something up on the AMQP working group JIRA ASAP as there'll no
doubt be plenty of debate. I think its important that we get Qpid and
the spec aligned on this, as it will be a crucial point of interop.

Cheers,
Alan.