Allow typing of properties
The current scheme is limited to key-value pairs where the value is
interpreted as a string. A problem with this that some key-values pairs
might be intended to represent other datatypes, e.g. a date or a float,
and without this typing information, it is impossible to check the
validity of the value. It is always possible for a client to add this
information with an xsi:type attribute, e.g.
<property uri="ivo://net.ivoa/properties/date"
xsi:type="xs:dateTime">2006-11-22T18:50:03Z</property>
but this might not be interpreted properly by the browser. However, if
we actually add a type attribute then we can cover this:
<property uri="ivo://net.ivoa/properties/date"
type="xs:dateTime">2006-11-22T18:50:03Z</property>.
The attribute is optional and non-inclusion implies that the datatype is
string. The value of the attribute can either be an XML datatype or a
reference to an XML schema that describes the data structure thus
allowing for more complicated properties such as:
<property uri="ivo://net.ivoa/properties/color" type="myschema.xsd">
<color>
<red>123</red>
<blue>234</blue>
<green>89</green>
</color>
</property>
Votes
Rename views to formats
This needs to be renamed to what it actually is, i.e. format(s), since
the current name is universally confusing.
Votes
Decoupled data servers
Under the current scheme, it is assumed that there is some communication
channel between the VOSpace and a data server, e.g. a gridftp server, so
that when a pushTo or pullFrom is completed, the data server can notify
the VOSpace service that the transfer has completed. This sort of
activity is particularly necessary when the endpoint is a logical one,
e.g. a one-time-use URL. This design is fine for the cases where we have
implemented the data servers ourselves or have access to the source code
so that we can add the callback; however, what happens when you are
dealing with an off-the-shelf data server where this is not the case or
non-trivial, e.g. the Globus gridftp server.
One solution is to have the client notify the VOSpace when the
transaction is complete (since this really is only a problem for the
asynchronous services) so pushToVoSpace would become:
- Client calls pushToVoSpace(<node>, <transfer>) returns <node> and <transfer> - the latter containing details for the data server
- Client transfers data to data server
- Client notifies VOSpace that transfer has been completed, e.g.
transferComplete(<node>).
There are a couple of problems with this, however: the client has to
call the space twice and might forget to do the notification call and
what happens if the transfer fails or is not done.
An alternate approach is to do the data transfer first of all and then
register the data object with the node including its physical location so pushToVoSpace becomes:
- Client transfer data to data server
- Client registers data with VOSpace: register(, URI of location) returns the registered <node>
This is actually the only transfer method which needs a modification: all the others work fine with decoupled servers. In fact, instead of adding an additional operation, we can modify pushToVoSpace either to have an additional URI argument: pushToVoSpace(<node>, <transfer>, location-uri) or we could just incorporate the location-uri into the transfer so that if the protocol contains an endpoint then that endpoint is interpreted to be the physical location of the data object.
One thing that would be useful is another operation to return the list of (decoupled) data servers (resources in SRB speak) that the VOSpace is using so I would suggest that we add a getDataServers operation.
Votes
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