On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, Keith Noddle wrote:
> For your delight and delectation, please find attached the TAP Working Draft.
> This is now on the Documents and Standards page of the IVOA Wiki and we can
> assume the review period has started. I'll create an RFC page in due course.
I don't see an RFC page yet, but I have one or two small comments,
so I'll write them here.
2.3.6: requirement that returned VOTables must be in TABLEDATA format.
I've raised a question about this before (but not had much answer) -
I'm interested in the justification for this requirement, as
it seems to be marginalisation of non-TABLEDATA formats which
does not have precedent in other IVOA documents. Perhaps an
issue for discussion also by the TCG or the VOTable WG.
2.5: table upload
"The default mapping of data types are shown above (no arraysize
or xtype)". I don't understand what the parenthesis means here -
arraysize and xtype are both listed in the table.
xtype values: the current draft of the VOTable 1.2 standard
defines two well-known values for the xtype attribute: "iso8601"
and "STC-S". Should these be used in place of "adql:TIMESTAMP"
and "adql:POINT"/"adql:REGION"? Not necessarily, but consider it.
2.8.2: version number changes
"The number will ... comprise no more than two integers ..."
"A version change at the third level is considered ..."
There seems to be some confusion here about how many parts the
version number has.
2.9.1: INFO elements
An example box contains:
<INFO name="SERVICE_PROTOCOL" value="1.0">TAP</INFO>
PCDATA (e.g. plain text) within INFO elements was permissible in
VOTable 1.0 and 1.1, but is no longer permissible in VOTable 1.2,
so as the VOTable 1.2 draft stands, this example is not compatible
with it (Section 2.9 of TAP mandates version 1.2 or later of
VOTable). Readers may be aware that this change in VOTable has been
controversial for exactly such reasons of backward compatibility.
I think that similar comments apply to examples like
<INFO name="QUERY_STATUS" value="ERROR">...</INFO>
though that depends on exactly what the ellipsis here is supposed
to indicate (not clear to me).
Mark
--
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/