Apps Messaging - Twin track?

[Mark Taylor]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007, Alasdair Allan wrote:

>> 2)  I have code that computes a deblended spectral profile of an eclipsing
>>   binary.  I would like to plot the spectrum, zoom in on a particular
>>   line and overplot my best fit to that feature by sending the data from
>>   my fit (without writing an intermediate file).
>>
>>   Missing Concept:  A data payload with the message instead of a simple
>>       file reference.
>
> Actually, I don't think this is a good idea. Having the ability to push data 
> inline vastly complicates the protocol because it necessary to support 
> arbitrarily large messages. While I can see why you might want to do this in 
> the general case, in the specific case of the simple messaging protocol we've 
> been tasked to build I think it isn't necessary, perhaps even detrimental, to 
> the final goal.

I tend to agree with Alasdair that this isn't a specially good idea,
but it is quite possible in PLASTIC; you can send a byte[] array 
or its XML-RPC equivalent as an argument.  The ivo://votech.org/votable/load
message has the in-line text of a VOTable as its argument as an 
illustration of this sort of thing.  It's not very frequently used 
(most applications prefer loadFromURL) for the scalability reasons 
to which Alasdair alludes.

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/