Number of full registries

[Tony Linde]

I don't agree with some of the comments here about the limited number of
full registries or that they will only be hosted at major VObs facilities.
Firstly, I don't know what a 'VObs facility' would be. The whole idea of the
VObs is that it is completely decentralised: data, applications, portals etc
can all be located wherever anyone wants, like the internet. So I don't
really see a need for any new facility over and above those that already
exist. 

Also, because the registry is central to all operations - on data, in
applications, from portals etc - I would expect most sites will want their
own full registry simply to speed up these operations. They'll work a lot
faster if a registry is co-located than if they have to run up a remote web
service call every time anything is done. So I would certainly expect
hundreds of full registries to exist.

One thing that might come out of this is the creation of mirror registries:
where a site chooses to simply mirror one full registry whenever it has
finished its daily (or whatever) harvest. But since they'll never be a
'visible' part of the VObs, we needn't worry too much about them.

Cheers,
Tony. 

__
Tony Linde
Phone:  +44 (0)116 223 1292    Mobile: +44 (0)7753 603356
Fax:    +44 (0)116 252 3311    Email:  Tony.Linde at leicester.ac.uk
Post:   Department of Physics & Astronomy,
        University of Leicester
        Leicester, UK   LE1 7RH
Web:    http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~ael
            
Project Manager, EuroVO VOTech   http://eurovotech.org 
Programme Manager, AstroGrid     http://www.astrogrid.org 
Co-Director,
 Leicester e-Science Centre      http://www.e-science.le.ac.uk/