registering collections

[Ray Plante]

Hi Registry enthusiasts,

Over the last few interops, there has been growing support for 
endorsing a common practice for registering data collections.  I 
presented this issue at ESAC; see my slides at 
http://wiki.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/InterOpMay2014Registry/Plante-RWGMay2014.pdf. 

The core proposal presented is that we register a data collection and 
all the services that access it in a single resource.  

(There is a separate question of what's a good granularity for the 
collection being registered.  For now, we'll say that some collections 
will be whole archives, and others will be smaller--a single catalog, 
or a small collection of datsets for a specific scientific result.)

I presented 3 possible ways to achieve this proposal.  I believe the 
"consensus" at the meeting was to simply use the existing 
CatalogService resource type for registering data collections and 
their services; use of the DataCollection resource type would be 
deprecated.

Any further comments?  Can we encourage our publishing registries to 
adopt this?  

I hope that in the waning days of the VAO, we will have sometime to 
identify the current resources that are not in line with this practice 
and to work with the publishers (and their managing registry) to 
update the records.  

cheers,
Ray