Updates/corrections desired for the Obscore DM specification

[Mark Taylor]

On Sat, 28 Oct 2017, Mireille Louys wrote:

> /Alberto Micol: correct obs_publisher_id corresponding UCD in table 6 p. 56/

Not quite: table 6 lists no column obs_publisher_id, but it does list
two columns with UCDs of "meta.ref.uri;meta.curation",
namely obs_publisher_did and publisher_id.
Presumably that's what you/Alberto are talking about here.

> Answer : I have two suggestions to resolve this:
> 1- to update this UCD with *meta.ref.ivoid*, as stated in the model item
> definition ; this was what was considered when the spec appeared
> 2- just write*meta.id* , which will relax the requirement on the way archives
> want to choose an ID for the publisher DID .
> 
> For instance, some publishers are currently examining DOIs instead of Ivoa
> Ids. Will this make the definition of an IVOA ID evolve ? Not sure.
> this leaves the door open for some redefinition on ids without breaking the
> ObsCore spec.

Since the types for those component UCDs are listed as[*]

   P | meta.curation  | Identity of man/organization responsible for the data
   Q | meta.ref.uri   | URI, universal resource identifier

another option would be to replace "meta.ref.uri;meta.curation"
(Q;P, illegal) with "meta.curation;meta.ref.uri" (P;Q, legal).

I note here that the current taplint release (STILTS v3.1-1)
has an error regarding these UCDs; it currently requires
obs_publisher_did and publisher_id to have the UCDs
"meta.ref.url;meta.curation" rather than
"meta.ref.uri;meta.curation" (both illegal UCD1+s), since I seem
to have missed updating the ObsCore validation code between
PR-ObsCore-v1.1-20160923 and REC-ObsCore-v1.1-20170509
(this change credited in section 6 to Alberto).
I will update taplint accordingly, but since the URL it's mandating
is in either case illegal UCD1+ it seems moot.

Note also that the obs_publisher_did FIELD definition in the
ObsCore Appendix C.3 example (page 62) makes the same mistake as
taplint; the obs_publisher_did field is written with
ucd="meta.ref.url;meta.curation".

Mark

[*] If the UCDlist document is scheduled for an update, the editors
    might consider rewording "man/organization" to something a bit
    more inclusive.

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/