TAP 1.1, MAXREC and TOP

[Walter Landry]

Markus Demleitner <msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
> Dear DAL,
> 
> I believe we should use the opportunity of TAP 1.1. to clarify the
> interaction of TAP's MAXREC and ADQL's TOP.
> 
> True, TAP is more general than ADQL, but the large majority of TAP
> queries are ADQL, and differing behaviours between various servers
> are an annoyance.
> 
> Essentially, the question is:  What's to happen when MAXREC=200 is
> specified in a query parameter, and there's a TOP 4000 clause in
> QUERY?
> 
> There certainly are good arguments to say "use the minimum of both
> numbers", but I'd argue for "use what's in the query", as that
> probably is most directly what the user wrote. You see, at least in
> TOPCAT, and I suspect in other clients, too, MAXREC is a bit out of
> the focus of the user interface but preset.  It's unlikely that users
> having wrote a TOP clause differing from MAXREC actually set
> MAXREC conciously.

That sounds very dependent on the particularities of which interface
people use.  Some people use curl.  I would vastly prefer to get rid
of one of them.  Having two ways to do the same thing has already
turned out to be confusing.  My inclination is to keep MAXREC, since
it is used in other services.

Cheers,
Walter Landry