An STC "when" and "where" example

[Arnold Rots]

Alasdair Allan wrote:
> 
> Arnold Rots wrote:
...
> > 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?

"If I don't have" is dealt with below; "do not want" is what I would
object to.

> 
> > 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.

You're mixing things, here.  You can leave out time, or spectral
information, or errors, or sizes.  What you cannot leave out is the
specification of your coordinate frames or the position of your
observatory - although you are allowed to say "UNKNOWN" for many
elements in there.

> 
> > 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.

What's the point of saying: "Something happened but I'm not going to
tell you what, when, and where"?
If we want to restrict circulation, that may be part of the scheme,
but is a different aspect.

  - Arnold

> 
> Al.
> 
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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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