Apps Messaging - Semantics of a Message

[Isa Barbarisi]

Mark Taylor wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, Doug Tody wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that we are still defining a standard service model
>> for each type of data, but just doing it in an adhoc fashion, by
>> defining operations at random as they need arises (which is, alas,
>> the way a lot of software is designed).
>
> there are times when ad hoc design is bad news, but I don't see this
> as one of them.  In PLASTIC, defining messages for specific 
> messaging/data-sharing requirements as they arise has worked quite
> well.
>
> The idea of agreeing up front on a structured hierarchical vocabulary 
> of mtypes intended to cover most or all semantic requirements does not 
> fill me with joy; it is likely to require a lot of work to
> achieve agreement, will inevitably be incomplete, and will probably 
> contain a large number of messages which never get used.
> I would much prefer to agree on a small number of mtypes which we know 
> we need, and augment the list on an ad hoc basis as indicated by 
> emerging specific requirements of applications which need to do 
> particular jobs.

Right. I agree with Mark about having an initial small number of mtypes 
(maybe we can start with the ones already existing) and then expanding 
the list according to the need of people.
I've also read about allowing applications to create their own private 
messages if necessary, and regarding to this point I would like to 
expose my experience with VOSpec and give full support to this option 
that I think is extremely useful. Few weeks ago we have been held here 
at ESAC a workshop about Spectroscopy & VO and I had to create a new "ad 
hoc" plastic message in collaboration with Igor, so we could manage to 
open 3D data from Aladin to VOSpec.
But I think the policy we should adopt in the future is to make public 
the new messages that could be useful to other application (and not 
keeping them secret as I did...) to avoid redundancies and repetitions.

Isa


>
> Mark
>

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