Web service standards question

[Guy Rixon]

Hi Tara,

the "standard interfaces" (renamed at yesterday's meeting to "VObs Support
Interfaces") are preliminary. The doc on the IVO wiki-web is actually an
internal draft for the working group. Thus, expect most details to change
before it becomes a recommendation.  Expect something more stable in 3Q2004.

Yesterday, the discussion at the interop meeting concluded that, of the
support interfaces,

 - the one that emits VOResources will be optional

 - the heartbeat one will be mandatory

 - the log-harvesting one will be optional

VOTable is an IVOA standard but it isn't _prescribed_ for all web services. If
you want to build a service that emits a different kind of table, that's up to
you. You need to judge for yourself which format interoperates better.

The GWS session at the curernt interop meeting also supported in outline the
proposals for asynchronous activities and single-sign-on authentication. It
looks like these don't apply to your service, but you might like to consider
them for other services.  These are initial, internal drafts, so expect many
details to change.

You need to check out the registry-metadata spec's so that you can register
your service in an IVO resource-registry.

Units are considered in the data-model group. Some of their output may be
relevant to your unit-conversion service.

Finally, we're considering (discussion on Friday) prescribing the WS-I profile
for basic SOAP. You might find it useful to download the conformance-testing
tools from the WS-I organization's site and check out your messages.

This isn't a definitive list of standards.

Cheers,
Guy

On Wed, 26 May 2004, Tara Murphy wrote:

> Hi,
> I have built a demonstrator web service to provide unit conversion
> functionality (from the AIPS++ Quanta module).
> This is part of the ATNF VO effort, and as the aim is to be VO-compatible,
> I was wondering what standards I should be following at this stage.
>
> The two areas I'm aware of are the StandardInterfaces document and
> VOTable. The service can take and return VOTables, so I think it is ok in
> that respect. Am I right in thinking the Standard Interfaces are still very
> much under development (and maybe not worth worrying about at this
> stage?)
>
> It would be good if somebody could summarise what else (if anything) I
> need to be thinking about.
>
> thanks,
> Tara
>
> -----
> Tara Murphy
> Postdoctoral Scientist
>
> Australia Telescope National Facility
> PO Box 76
> Epping NSW 1710
> Australia
>
>

Guy Rixon 				        gtr at ast.cam.ac.uk
Institute of Astronomy   	                Tel: +44-1223-337542
Madingley Road, Cambridge, UK, CB3 0HA		Fax: +44-1223-337523