More separation

Roy Williams roy at caltech.edu
Thu Dec 9 09:02:36 PST 2004


From: "Tony Linde"
>  The same applies to data services: one service
> might provide access to multiple data collections and one collection might
> be served up by more than one service.

As soon as the first cone-searches were built in 2002, we had URLs that look like:
http://blahblah.org/cgi-bin/cone?Catalog=Messier&RA=200&Dec=20&SR=10

Dissecting this URL, we can see two different semantically-distinct entities:

(1) http://blahblah.org/cgi-bin/cone?Catalog=Messier
This is an instance of a conesearch which queries a specific data resource (the Messier 
catalog). It represents the point of view of an astronomer-client.

(2) http://blahblah.org/cgi-bin/cone?
This is a sort of "meta-conesearch", that can act as a consearch for a number of data 
resources. It represents the point of view of a software developer.



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