TAP Notes

[Mark Taylor]

Markus,

Thanks, you've done a good job on Note-ifying these requirements.
I'm quite happy to be added to the author list.

I have committed a small number of uncontroversial edits to TAPNotes.html
(which I think is the source file?) for typos etc.

Other slightly more substantial points:

Sec 2.1.2:

I think the heading of the table is wrong: fix is to replace

      <th span="3">VOTable</th>

with

      <th colspan="3">VOTable</th>

I must admit I don't really understand the proposal of section 2.1.2,
or maybe I just don't get its motivation.  The text about ensuring
that numeric operations should be possible on types that derive
from columns which were numeric in the tables uploaded makes sense,
but what does it mean to say that a VOTable short should become an
ADQL SMALLINT, given that SMALLINT is not defined in ADQL?

Sec 3.1.2:

"The payload of such an error message SHOULD be a VOTable formatted
 as a std:DALI-compliant error message."

DALI says the error document MAY be a VOTable or it can be plain text.
I'm not really a fan of using VOTables as error containers
(what's it for?) so I'm -1 for recommending it here.  At least I
wouldn't deprecate plain text error messages, maybe even recommend them.

Sec 3.2.1:

In principle a quote is for a job which could be started at any 
point (not just now), so quoting an absolute end time doesn't 
make sense.  From that point of view number of seconds is better
than ISO8601.

Also using ISO8601 includes time zone complications, but it seems like
it's already used for destruction time, in which case this isn't
introducing any problem that's not already present.

Probably nobody ever provides useful quotes for TAP services anyway
though, so I wouldn't advocate too much sweat here.

Sec 4.2.1.1:

The access URL in the example is http://localhost:8080/tap/tapexampless.
If I understand the text correctly, shouldn't this be of the form

    http://<host>[:<port>]/<path>/examples

?

Appendix A:

Formatted HTML contains a "<" sign.  Fix is to replace

   and minEpoch<1900

with

   and minEpoch&lt;1900

On Mon, 2 Dec 2013, Markus Demleitner wrote:

> Dear DAL list,
> 
> as many of you may remember, I've solicited input and contributions to
> what I called "TAP Implementation Notes" since about the Pune Interop.
> I've let the thing rot a bit as people's eyes were elsewhere.
> 
> Now, however, I'm hearing more and more murmuring about possible
> enhancements of the TAP stack (e.g., ADQL+, which is mentioned for the
> publication GAIA results, and we might want some extensions for some
> more powerful queries to RegTAP; also, examples is now in DALI, so
> it's high time we say how it's going to look like for TAP).  So, I
> believe it's time now to go ahead and publish a first version of the
> note.
> 
> I'm fairly serious about the "first" in "first version" here -- if
> things work out the way I hope they are, the note should go through
> fairly many revisions in the next few years, collecting text that
> will later end up in the appropriate standards, and I'd like to
> cordially invite *you* (yes, you there with your fingers on the
> keyboard) to contribute.
> 
> Even for this version, I'd be happy to have more of the contributors in
> the author list -- Mark, Paul, Pierre, Tom: Could I list you as authors
> or did I mis-represent your contributions too grossly?
> 
> Also, if you have something in your drawer (the CDS debug endpoint
> comes to mind...), please feel free to contribute as well.  I'll hold
> off with sending out the note for another week or so.
> 
> Meanwhile, my dream has been to make the published snapshots of the
> note represent the "rough consensus" part of the "rough consensus and
> running code" mantra of successful standards writing, which means: if
> you absolutely detest something that's in there now, please do
> protest.
> 
> On the other hand, if you've looked at the document in 2012 and liked
> what you saw, don't bother re-reading, the difference between then
> and now is just redaction.
> 
> So, without further ado, here's what will become the note 1.0 unless
> you stop me:
> 
> http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/TAPImplementationNotes
> 
> There's also a wiki page for this if you prefer: 
> 
> http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/TAPImplementationNotes
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>         Markus
> 
> 

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/