Arrays in TAP_SCHEMA

[Markus Demleitner]

Hi Pat,

On Mon, Jun 05, 2017 at 11:00:09PM -0700, Patrick Dowler wrote:
> Markus? Just poking you to see if you missed my last message in this topic...

Oh, since you nicely summarised my main sentiment:

> On 1 June 2017 at 13:58, Patrick Dowler <pdowler.cadc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So are you proposing that instead of making arraysize in tap_schema
> > sort of compatible with "size" from 1.0 we just make it a string and
> > use exactly the VOTable syntax? And then we don't need
> > tap_schema.columns.varsize at all.

...I thought I'd save the traffic to enthusiastically add my +1 to
that.  But yes, that's what I'd like the best.

> > PS-Maybe we should make VOTable more type-safe? :-)

If we feel we need to fix anything, my vote would always be to fix it
in VOTable *and* wherever else it needs fixing -- it's always a pain
when one has to bridge between various hack^Wdifferent ways to solve
a given problem...

In this case, I think deprecating the syntax where you can have both
an asterics and a number in the last component of a VOTable arraysize
("4x7x2*") would be a good thing -- you really can't handle it
differently from just an asterics anyway.

         -- Markus