DAL/TAP Response

[Patrick Dowler]

On Friday 06 February 2009 03:33:02 Ray Plante wrote:
> Splitting the spec into the two steps would appear to favor (a) the REST
> architectural approach and (b) the choice of layering Param-Query on top
> of ADQL.

Splitting the two can also been seen as treating param-query as a query 
language in it's own right (an alternative language to ADQL) and in my 
opinion there is a good case to be made to do just that. There has always 
been an idea in the background to allow for use of other query languages 
(including pass-through native SQL for power users of specific systems, for 
example)...

I have not thought about this in much detail, but considerable clarity may be 
gained by formulating PQ as a simple query language and then determining a 
consistent way to express it in terms of http-params (obviously attempting to 
be consistent with existing practice). Just thinking about it this way may 
help to resolve the tension in the current draft spec.

Just a thought,

-- 

Patrick Dowler
Tel/Tél: (250) 363-0044
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
National Research Council Canada
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