"RegTAP" vs "relational registry"

[Markus Demleitner]

Dear Registry WG,

There's been some brief internal discussion on the names of
"TAP+model" standards.  This has been an issue for ObsCore vs. ObsTAP
already, and it comes up with what I've so far called "RegTAP" for
short and "relational registry" for long.

Since I expect "RegTAP" will not be the last instance of "data model
mapped to set of tables for TAP querying" ("Coverage/STCTAP",
"FiltersTAP", "PhotTAP", "DataLinksTAP" all come to mind), I believe
thinking a bit about what a sensible naming policy for this kind of
thing could be; this is of course not only for the Registry WG to
consider, but a well-reasoned decision here could help future
name-forging.

The "data model" part behind this obviously needs a name; this would
have been ObsCore or VOResource, respectively.  We don't get around
these, but they are not good names for the standards (in both cases),
since the data model isn't the focus in both cases (and "RegTAP"
doesn't even define anything in VOResource, it exclusively defines
the mapping); also, data models are (should be, at least) abstract
things, ideally described in a meta language like VO-DML, and
definitely not collections of TAP_SCHEMA entries with extended
descriptions.

I'm less sure the "tableset plus TAP" things actually should have
names.  I've taken over the RegTAP moniker in parallel to ObsTAP
after RI2 ("Registry Interfaces 2") was out due to the scope
limitation of the document.  I'd agree, though, that the TAP thing
doesn't play a *large* role and hence shouldn't be emphasized in the
short name; we're defining a table set (plus a bit), not a
mogrification of TAP, after all.

So, after consideration I believe what we should have for RegTAP and
all the similar endeavours that may follow is the name is the
tableset.  "Relational (observation metadata|registry)" sound like
resonable names for those, at least for people dealing with
relational databases (I'm not proposing to change ObsCore's name now,
but if it's reworked, moving into that direction sounds like a good
idea to me).  The corresponding acronyms could then be RelObs or
RelReg, and whenever TAP/ADQL-specific aspects come up, people could
say "RelReg over TAP" or so.

If you agree with these thoughts, I'll do the redactional changes to
"RegTAP" some time after christmas, for what I hope might then go on
to become PR.

Cheers,

         Markus

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