Extensions to VOResource - was Error column in VOResource

[Ray Plante]

Hey Roy,

On Tue, 18 May 2004, Roy Williams wrote:
> I believe that each service can be described in several metadata formats:
> 
> 1 -- The SOAP clients want WSDL
> 2 -- Some astronomers want VOResource
> 3 -- Some astronomers want the VOTable header of the output.
> 4 -- The Librarians want Dublin Core and METS

This may be implicit in your subsequent statements, but it's important 
point out that these are not completely equivalent in content--in 
particular, none of these can serve as a master format from which all the 
others can be derived.  There applicability depends on the type of 
service.  This is a point, I believe, is a main motivation behind 
AstroGrid's development of CEA. 

> We could demand that each service expose an OAI interface with some of these
> metadata formats.

with emphasis on "could".  As much as I like OAI, this seems a bit of a
big hammer for supporting one logical record.  Nevertheless, the important
question you raise is, do services need a uniform way to support
self-descriptions in multiple formats?

cheers,
Ray