registering data collections

[Patrick Dowler]

http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/Discovercoll11RFC

This is the RFC page for a proposed endorsed note on how to describe
data collections so that users can easily find services -- essentially
by adding "capabilities" directly to the data collection resource
records. I made some comments in the RFC, but I'll l repeat the main
point here:

(context: CADC already has a separate DataCollection record in the
registry for each collection we serve, ~20 iirc)

In trying to configure the ivo://cadc.nrc.ca/IRIS data collection with
related service relationships and aux capabilities I ran into a
problem: the capability child element is not allowed (schema
validation exception) and when I looked in the relevant xsd I see that
it is only allowed in a resource of type Service. The example A.1 is
actually a resource of type CatalogService (extends DataService
extends Service) whereas ivo://cadc.nrc.ca/IRIS is a resource of type
DataCollection (extends Resource). The end of page 6 covers this issue
and promises that VOResource-1.1 will allow capabilities in
DataCollection... so at this point I cannot implement aux capablities
since we used DataCollection.

The recommendation to use CatalogService in place of DataCollection as
a stop gap seems to force clients back into service-oriented
discovery. I have a feeling we would regret making that
recommendation. Is it sensible to put this note on hold until we have
VOResource-1.1 and can describe DataCollection resources properly?



-- 
Patrick Dowler
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
Victoria, BC, Canada