RofR

[Matthew J. Graham]

Hi,

>> The options for a registry are really:
>> - is it a publishing registry (I can harvest the records it maintains)
>
> No, you cannot. Only one full registry can harvest the records of a
> publishing registry. And it is that full registry that manages the 
> authIDs
> owned by the publishing registry.
>
> That is the definition of full and publishing registry that we were 
> working
> with at the Harvard interop meeting from which we came up with the 
> owned and
> managed authIDs concept.
>
> If you want to change what was agreed then, fine, but you'll need to 
> either
> come up with new terms or make it clear how you are redefining the 
> terms we
> have been using so far.

I think that what is clear from the discussions that have been 
happening on this list over the past ten days is that this concept of a 
hierarchy of full registries with owning/managing publishing registries 
is one that a lot of us are not happy with. How can you stop anyone 
from harvesting a publishing registry unless you make the  harvesting 
interface usable only by particular individuals?

Also a publishing registry holds authority records for the authority 
records it maintains, e.g. the HEASARC registry, and this is not 
necessarily a full registry.

>> I also think we need to drop this idea of a full registry
>> because supporting every variant schema that every astronomer
>> comes up is unrealistic
>
> It has nothing to do with the astronomer. It is the owner of a 
> registry and
> the people they authorise to add records who may come up with new 
> schema. If
> your only public means of adding a record to a registry only allows 
> the user
> to add specific types of data then that is all you will get.
>
>> (and this has nothing to do with
>> relational/native XML implementation), e.g. is Astrogrid
>> intending to support the horrible hack schema that identifies
>> records from the Penge Local Astronomy Youth Club?
>
> You're mixing up supporting a schema with storing it. You do not have 
> to
> support a schema in order to store it. If someone adds a record with a
> schema not supported by any software then it won't be used by anyone. 
> That
> does not stop the registry from storing it. The registry mandates that
> certain information must be included (VOResource) but whatever is added
> beyond that - the registry is unaware of it. If someone stores a 
> record with
> some schema extension that only one piece of software knows about then 
> only
> that piece of software will use the data stored under that extension.

I disagree: what is a registry = something that can store records 
(conceptual) but how something is stored is an implementation detail 
and that necessarily means that the only thing that can be stored is 
what is supported, i.e. this particular record can be stored because I 
have implemented a storage model for it.

	Cheers,

	Matthew