An STC "when" and "where" example

[Alasdair Allan]

Arnold Rots wrote:
> In my view the most basic requirement is: A VOEvent should include all 
> available information on the event that is scientifically significant.

Tentatively agree, but would argue that in some circumstances some data 
about the event may be proprietary and must be with held from clients 
that are not authenticated and authorised to receive it.

> The criterion for inclusion ought to be scientific significance, not 
> what the service feels like implementing.

Err, no. That's very different from what you've said above.

> And it would seem part of our job to agree on a canonical list of items
> that are considered scientifically significant.

Err, again, no. The specification is for a generic event, it surely 
shouldn't be our job to try and figure out every single possible use, 
and hence all the possible scientifically relevant bits of information 
that could be encoded. Instead our job is to establish a scheme that 
can be used to generically pass such data, but does not require you to 
do so...

> As a first stab at what that information would be, at least as far as
> STC is concerned, I would think: spatial position, time, spectral
> band, position of the observatory - all as accurate as possible and
> with errors and sizes/intervals/bandwidths.

What if I do not have or do not want to pass this information?

> An honest effort should be made by services to assemble all that
> information, but obviously, if it cannot be produced, it will not be
> available and hence cannot be included - that's fair enough.

But your current schema doesn't allow such information to be "assumed", 
you've specifically said that your XML representation doesn't let you 
make things optional.

> Proprietary information, authentication, and restricted acc are is a
> whole different kettle of fish; that is a separate discussion.

I don't think it is, it's fundamental to the architecture.

Al.