[Ops] UserAgentUsage

[Tom McGlynn (NASA/GSFC Code 660.1)]

Hi Mark,

This looks fine to me generally, but I'm a little concerned that if it turns out to be useful then 
we may have made it difficult to expand the kinds of additional information that are included in the 
comment.  Right now the only additional information we are considering is the URL at which the 
validation results may
be seen.  That's probably all we'll need, but it seems to me that we'd leave it a little more open 
if we were to include a standard prefix so that if we
eventually want to provide something else we can just use a different prefix.  E.g., you give the 
example

User-Agent: STILTS/3.1-4 (ivoa-validator http://validators.org/results) Java/1.8.0_181

Here the ivoa- lets us know we've got some IVOA ops info here.  The validator gives us the specific usage, and the
http://validators.org/results is where validator results are given.  I'd like to see that last a little more explicit as

User-Agent: STILTS/3.1-4 (ivoa-validator resultURL=http://validators.org/results) Java/1.8.0_181

where we've agreed that resultURL (or some other string) defines what the token i.  Next year if 
this turns out to be popular we could add some
other (presumably optional) keyword to give some other information.  Even now, this allows the 
provider to include information they think is important
that isn't the results URL.

Just to give an example, maybe the querier wants to indicate the standard[s] being validated, so 
they'd put

User-Agent: STILTS/3.1-4 (ivoa-validator resultURL=http://validators.org/results standard=sia2.0,votable1.4) Java/1.8.0_181

or instead of a URL for the results, an Email to contact with questions

User-Agent: STILTS/3.1-4 (ivoa-validator contact=ops at institution.edu) Java/1.8.0_181

What do you think?

      Tom

Mark Taylor wrote:
> Dear Ops,
>
> at the recent Interop we had some discussions about how we can/should
> use the User-Agent HTTP header to allow service operators to identify
> requests originating from things like validators as distinct from
> user science requests.  Following this, I have drafted some text
> on this wiki page:
>
>     http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/UserAgentUsage
>
> I think it more or less reflects what we concluded at College Park,
> but there are a few details and open questions I've filled in.
> If you're interested in this topic, please take a look and
> post comments here or to me, or just edit the wiki page.
>
> If people are in agreement with this approach, I'll try to
> implement it in my clients, and we can talk about whether it
> makes sense to issue it as an IVOA Note.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> 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/
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