TAP1.0 Comments

[Markus Demleitner]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:22:16AM +0200, Francois Bonnarel wrote:
> I was also wondering about this single table output issue because I
> had use  cases in mind where it could be a great constraint
> (Observation metadata in the larger extent) What would be the price
> to pay to remove this limitation?

Well, at least the nice symmetry that the output of a TAP service can
be used as the upload for another would be sacrificed, unless one
lifted the requirement on single-table uploads.  

Allowing multi-table uploads, however, is IMHO a relatively high
price to pay (without having thought too much about it, it seems
there a tricky points defining the semantics of such an operation),
too high indeed in the late stage of an RFC. 

Because of that -- and of Gerard's observation that TAP currently
defines no query language that would allow you to generate
multi-table responses -- I'd suggest we leave the single-table
requirement and postpone multi-table responses until we have more
experience with TAP.

Cheers,

         Markus