[vodml] EnumLiterals and vodml-id

[CresitelloDittmar, Mark]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Gerard Lemson <glemson1 at jhu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Mark
> I also will continue the discussion and I hope you will do so to without
> your chair-hat on, as I think the different points brought forward have not
> all been replied to.
>

I'm happy to participate, I just don't want to be the only one pushing a
point.


>
> > Since the value is directly tied to the definition of the
> EnumerationLiteral, these
> > are the values which data providers MUST give when representing these
> literals.
> >
> No, this is absolutely not true.
> Data providers SHOULD annotate the enumerated values that appear in their
> own data sets with vodml-refs identifying the VO-DML EnumLiteral in some
> model that (best) represents their value. That's it.
> There is nowhere in our proposal a statement that VO-DML models MUST be
> implemented 1-1. In fact the whole effort started from the desire to have
> an annotation mechanism based on formal data models that can also annotate
> existing/legacy data sets.
>

sure.. this is the goal, but there is some time between now and the day
when data providers can annotate their products according to the
not-yet-complete serialization spec, and vodml aware software can pick up
those elements to map the provider's value to the desired literal.  At this
point, it wouldn't matter what the data provider's string was.. the
declaration of it as the vo-dml EnumLiteral would make it irrelevant.  A
validator might have a problem if the string value did not match the
literal name though, since typically one instantiates the literal based on
the string.

These models we are working (DatasetMetadata, STC2, etc) are working to be
vo-dml compliant to facilitate this path, but must also serve the present
and near-term, where we have model aware, but not vodml aware software.

So, if I define vo-dml compliant enumeration in the DatasetMetadata model
   SpectralBand
      + Radio
      + XRay

what value would a data provider need to give in order for model aware, but
not vo-dml aware software to be able to instantiate the proper literal
instance on
  myObject.band:SpectralBand[1]

Mark
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