First comments on the IVOA Documents Standards, V1.2

Following the comments gathered during the RFC, the IVOA Documents Standards has been reversed to Working Draft. The new Working Draft, V1.2, dated 14 January 2009, is found here.

In particular, the Documents Standard has been merged with the IVOA Note "Guidelines and Procedures for IVOA Document Standards Management V1.0", and the document numbering schema has been updated, after a lively discussion within the TCG.

The formal RFC on V1.2 should be launched by the beginning of March 2009. For the moment, feel free to post your comments if any on this page.

Minimal implementation rules

I'm not sure if this is one of these "not again" topics, but I'd really like so see something on the implementation side. Let me dream for a moment: What if the document said something like "A PR describing protocols, formats or similar computer processible artefacts can only become REC if (a) at least two independent implementations [fantasy: one of them in a C-linkable language; this would almost immediately allow bindings for basically all major languages] are available and (b) a validation suite is provided that allows implementors to verify the conformity of their implementation [for what it's worth]".

As a matter of fact, I think the validation suite would be worth more than all words and probably even formal specifications, since the behaviour defined by it is behaviour clients can rely on.

Now, I admit that if something like this were to become part of the standards process, more diligence is needed as to the wording, and certain details would have to be worked out (if I had my way, I'd require the implementations to be published under a DFSG-free licence, for starters). But I'm convinced the VO would be more fun to work and more robust with if rules like these were adopted. -- MarkusDemleitner - 17 Feb 2009


Edit | Attach | Watch | Print version | History: r6 < r5 < r4 < r3 < r2 | Backlinks | Raw View | Raw edit | More topic actions...
Topic revision: r3 - 2009-02-17 - MarkusDemleitner
 
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform Powered by Perl This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platformCopyright © 2008-2024 by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
Ideas, requests, problems regarding TWiki? Send feedback