Datalink - a naive question...

[Paul Harrison]

Hi DALWG,

I have a naive question - why is DataLink defined as a service rather than simply a specialised VOTable pattern with an associated mime type?

It seems to me that documentation could be greatly simplified if this approach were taken - no DALI, VOSI etc. in the Datalink document.

Then just modify DALI to say that services that return URLs to data might point directly to a data file or to a DataLink VOTable with the two cases determinable by the client using the mime type.

Overall this seems to reduce the overall complexity of the documentation with no loss of functionality, or am I missing something?

Regards,
	Paul