Resources = services!

[Tony Linde]

Hi Ray,

Back again :)

I'd like to come up with a solution to this issue like the one I just
proposed for the identifiers, where your desire for an 'all-in-one' registry
can be matched with mine for separate registries for services, community and
mySpace.

I certainly think we should have the same metadata structure and approach:
my previous proposal for curation plus metadata formats, which seems to
match your curation plus extensions. Whether common curation metadata for
'services, community and mySpace' makes sense is difficult to say - I cannot
see a lot of commonality (and I sure as hell do not want to start debating
the contents of the 'Creator' item for people :) ).

I'm thinking as I type here so bear with me... How about this:

1. All resources must have identity metadata. This includes the ResourceID
being debated separately (I don't like the Ticker or ShortName - this gets
us straight back into managing uniqueness again) and Title (which is not
checked for uniqueness).

2. Resources fall under a small set of supertypes: currently 'services,
community and mySpace' (we'll change the name of mySpace to an IVOA generic
name later). So, identity metadata for each resource will include a
SuperType item.

3. Each resource will contain supertype-specific curation metadata. So
serviceCuration includes [type (catalog, image, ...), publisher, creator,
invocationAddress, etc]; communityCuration includes [type (person, group,
community, ...), location, supervisor, etc]; mySpaceCuration includes [type
(file, table, ...); serverServiceID, size, etc] or whatever.

4. Resources also include MFs or extensions specific to their types. A
resource can contract to provide more than one MF.

We can then get on with defining:

A. what are the supertypes we need?
B. what is the curation metadata for each supertype?
C. what are the types within each supertype?
D. the MFs for specific types of metadata.

I guess that the addition of a supertype means that the idea of a 'local'
registry can cope with the situation where a registry is service only,
community only or mySpace only.

Cheers,
Tony. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ray Plante [mailto:rplante at poplar.ncsa.uiuc.edu] 
> Sent: 28 May 2003 16:50
> To: registry at ivoa.net
> Subject: RE: Resources = services!
> ...