content, format, ctype, or xtype ?

[Roy Williams]

Pat

With a relational database, there is none of this complexity. Values can 
be floats or strings or a handful of other simple primitive types. 
Nothing else. Can't we bring TAP back to its original limited purpose as 
an interface to a database?

Surely it is over complicated to try and bring all this semantics into 
it? RA and Dec (within TAP) should not be complex semantic entities with 
coordinate frames, they should be SIMPLY floating point numbers!. If you 
want to know what equinox/observer/format/data model/width/precision, 
then look somewhere else, because TAP should not know this! The proposed 
standard can never be robust (or event understandable) with all this 
semantic complexity mixed in there, all these overlapping and undefined 
attributes.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify, our only hope!
Just my $0.02.
Roy


-- 

California Institute of Technology
626 395 3670