TAP RFC [VOSI]

[Patrick Dowler]

On Monday 14 September 2009 02:00:09 Keith Noddle wrote:
> In consultation with Christophe, I therefore propose that we extend the
> TAP RFC to 25th September to allow the above details to come together.

Last two days, last issue from rfc page:

In the current spec, there are two resources under the base URL and VOSI are 
accessed via one of them:

async
sync
sync?REQUEST=getAvailability
sync?REQUEST=getCapabilities
sync?REQUEST=getTableMetadata

There is a proposal to access VOSI as resources off the base URL (more pure 
REST style vs standard DAL REQUEST param). The motivation is to move VOSI out 
from under sync so that both async and sync could be made optional (both 
required in PR). The new resource structure would be:

async
sync
availability
capabilities
tableMetadata

We have had many discussions on this topic, made compromises all around, and 
never reached a unanimous agreement. There are good reasons for both 
approaches. The current draft is consistent with DAL style as embodied in 
SSA1. The proposed makes it cleanly possible to have optional async/sync 
execution of jobs (currently we require both, but we could relax this in a 
future version of TAP very easily if needed).

To be very clear: both of these work fine, so there is nothing broken and to be 
fixed. This is a stylistic issue (RPC vs REST) and about making plausible 
future changes as easy and painless as possible. Given that, I don't see any 
point in dredging up all the arguments again. 

The crude WG concensus is that more people favour using resources over the 
REQUEST parameters, but I would like to call a vote to verify that and will 
change the draft to match the WG decision. If you care, please respond to this 
message and chose one of:

use REQUEST parameter

use resources

I will tally and start rewriting on Monday (28th).

-- 

Patrick Dowler
Tel/Tél: (250) 363-0044
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
National Research Council Canada
5071 West Saanich Road
Victoria, BC V9E 2M7

Centre canadien de donnees astronomiques
Conseil national de recherches Canada
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Victoria (C.-B.) V9E 2M7