SODA Gripes (5) No single-value arguments for intervals

[James.Dempsey at csiro.au]

Hi Markus,

I'm not sure if my post on this reached the list, but I still have the concern that we should maintain consistency between the same parameters for SIA2 and SODA where possible.

Cheers,
James Dempsey

________________________________________
From: dal-bounces at ivoa.net <dal-bounces at ivoa.net> on behalf of Markus Demleitner <msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de>
Sent: Wednesday, 2 March 2016 2:09 AM
To: dal at ivoa.net
Subject: Re: SODA Gripes (5) No single-value arguments for intervals

Hi DAL,

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 09:22:15AM -0800, Patrick Dowler wrote:
> That was an idea to make simple things simple to do. In parameter
> descriptor terms it seems to be the difference between arraysize="2"
> xtype="interval" (both bounds required) and arraysize="2*" xtype="interval"
> (one or two values) which permits a scalar value...

Ok, I've not noticed the 2* thing.  So, ok, you get past the VOTable
TABLEDATA parser, which makes me dislike the whole thing a bit less.
Of course, my worry that it needlessly introduces another bug surface
(i.e., something a validator would need to test and that
implementations will still get wrong) remains, so:

> Personally, I'm not too attached to the single number means scalar value...
> I agree it doesn't add any capability, but it might make a common mistake
> do what was probably intended.

Pat is not too attached, I fairly heavily dislike it: Would anyone
object to removing them, then?

Cheers,

        Markus