SSAP: PARAMs in GROUPs

[Markus Dolensky]

Dear Igor,

Neither consulting the VOTable chairperson nor reviewing an earlier mail thread
on this very topic (http://www.ivoa.net/forum/dal/0408, "SSAmples") with the DM
lead revealed any need in favor of the suggested restriction on the use of the
PARAM element. It would be difficult to enforce SSA specific VOTable conventions
anyway.

Greetings,
Markus

Quoting Igor Chilingarian <igor.chilingarian at obs.univ-lyon1.fr>:

> Dear Markus, Doug, and all,
> 
> I'm a bit concerned about PARAMs as replacements of FIELDs in the
> SSAP query response. In the examples given in the document there
> are PARAMs within GROUPs, whereas FIELDs are referenced by FIELDref's
> Though this is VOTable schema compliant, don't you think it would be
> better to move all the PARAMs outside GROUPs and make them child elements
> of the TABLE, and put PARAMrefs in the GROUPs instead?
> 
> Why it can be useful:
>  * The meaning of the groups will become clearer
>  * It will allow homogeneous handling of PARAMs and FIELDs in the software
>    parsing the response
>  * Since it is possible to put GROUP inside GROUP, the only way to locate
>    all the PARAMs is t