New version of VO Support Interfaces: v0.26

[Guy Rixon]

Ray,

following decisions made at earlier interops, a service SHOULD implement the
parts of VOSI that emit VOResources and MUST implement the availability
feature. I didn't chabge that in v0.25 as it was chosen democratically.

Cheers,
Guy

On Mon, 7 May 2007, Ray Plante wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 7 May 2007, Roy Williams wrote:
> > (4) If somebody makes a service that has fabulous science data but NONE OF
> > THE ABOVE, should the IVOA reject it?
>
> I'm not sure exactly what was intended by the current version of the
> VOSI document.  I believe the wording suggests that the VOSI standard
> would be integrated into every standard protocol, with the MUSTs and
> SHOULDs applying.
>
> There is another way to approach this document: as an additional
> standard a provider MAY support on top of the specific protocol
> specification in order to better integrate a service with the VO.  The
> "MAY", of course, means optional.  In fact, this is what I thought we were
> planning to do, at least initially (but maybe I was alone in this notion).
>
> The motivation to support this interface is in capturing the highest
> validationLevel rating assigned to it by our registries.  That is, if it
> is supported, it will be easier for a registry to curate the record--the
> registry can keep the information up to date and can monitor its
> availability.
>
> At some time in the future, a future protocol spec may say "you MUST
> support the VOSI interface".  This might happen once we have (a)
> demonstrated that VOSI support is *necessary* in order to integrate the
> service, and (b) made it easy to suppport through the wide availablility
> of service toolkits.  I do not think VOSI should be required in advance of
> either of these.
>
> cheers,
> Ray
>

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