Fwd: VOTable 1.2

[Rob Seaman]

As context for VOEvent's use of Params (and potentially of other  
VOTable constructs), note this thread on the VOTable list:

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Doug Tody <dtody at nrao.edu>
> Date: October 9, 2008 7:25:23 AM GMT-07:00
> To: Mark Taylor <m.b.taylor at bristol.ac.uk>
> Cc: VOTable mailing list <votable at ivoa.net>
> Subject: Re: VOTable 1.2
>
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2008, Mark Taylor wrote:
>
>>   INFO element:
>>      What is the thinking behind the changes to INFO?  It appears  
>> to be
>>      converging with PARAM sufficiently that there doesn't seem to be
>>      much point in having two different elements.
>>      Also: does it make sense to have a 'unit' attribute for an  
>> element
>>      whose values can only be of string type?
>
> Note INFO has a fundamental role in the DAL protocols, being used for
> status returns (and also informational output in a VOTable).  We would
> not like to see it go away.
>
> To me INFO and PARAM are quite different, in usage if not appearance.
> A PARAM is a table FIELD (it is table data) which has a constant
> value for the whole table.  An INFO is some informational metadata
> which is associated with the table, and is NOT table data.  If we
> were to represent the table in a fully resolved fashion (e.g., in a
> DBMS), the PARAMS would become normal table fields.  The INFOs would
> probably disappear.
>
> 	- Doug

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.ivoa.net/pipermail/voevent/attachments/20081009/3db482ca/attachment-0001.html>