[TRANSFORMS,QUANTITY] - What is the scope of this work package?

[Ray Plante]

On Wed, 21 May 2003, Doug Tody wrote:
> As we discussed in Cambridge (e.g. in the registry discussions), within the
> VO framework per-se we probably want to fix the units to one or a very few
> options, since the framework is not a user interface and we want to simplify
> the programmatic interfaces between components.  

I think the RWG was unclear about what it meant in terms of "fixing the
units".  My own take is that the registry interfaces would impose these 
restrictions to make implementation of the interfaces more 
straightforward.  Naturally, interchange between such registry interfaces 
would have employ the same fixed units.  

Nevertheless, I feel the data model does need to be at least a little more 
general.  For example, if you might go to a service to transform units 
(e.g. coordinates) into those needed for another service (e.g. Cone 
Search).  In this case, you need to transport these "unsupported" units 
somehow to the transform service.  

cheers,
Ray