VOSI v1.1 Proposed Recommendation: Request for Comments

Discussion page for the IVOA VOSI 1.1 Proposed Recommendation.

The VOSI Proposed Recommendation can be found at:

• http://www.ivoa.net/documents/VOSI/20160413/

Comments from the IVOA Community RFC period: 2015-04-15 - 2015-05-27

Comments from Mark Taylor

Basically OK. I have a couple of suggestions for change/improvement:

• Schema versioning:
  • Can this standard make use of the XML Schema Versioning Note? In particular, I'd like to see a version="1.1" attribute on tableset elements returned from tables-1.1 services.
• detail parameter:
  • I would like to see, alongside detail=min , a detail=max option. Sometimes the client knows whether it wants/needs the whole tableset at once - it may be that a columnless tableset is no use to it, in which case the current proposal may end up returning a (possibly large) document which it doesn't want. However services (like VizieR) can't be forced to return the whole tableset if it's huge. So I'd suggest:
    • [no detail specification] : service decides whether to include column detail or not (unchanged)
    • ?detail=min : service must not include column detail (unchanged)
    • ?detail=max : service may either include all column detail, or fail with a 403 Forbidden
  • I would make use in topcat of a detail=max option along these lines if it existed.
  • I still (cf my and Markus's email comments 16 Feb) don't see much value in the 303 redirect.

And some minor comments on the text:

• Sec 3: a rogue backslash is visible in the output of the verbatim'd example element specification http://some.name.space\#elementName
• Sec 3.1: in the PDF version, the URL http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VOResource/v1.0 extends off the side of the page (a couple of words elsewhere in the document hang a long way off the right as well).
• Sec 4: The table mentions both ivo://ivoa.net/std/VOSI#tables and ivo://ivoa.net/std/VOSI#tables-1.1 standardID values, but the text about the tables endpoint just says "... the value of the standardID attribute must be ivo://ivoa.net/std/VOSI#tables ".
• Sec 4: "(see example given in section 2.1)" - there is no section 2.1.
• Sec 5: Example 1 contains xsi:type="vs:ParamHTTP" attributes, where the vs namespace is set as xmlns:vs="http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VODataService/v1.0" . But the last sentence in section 4 says "this document recommends using the http://www.ivoa.net/xml/VODataService/v1.1#ParamHTTP interface type". Is that an inconsistency? Examples 2, 3 and 4 do use the v1.1 namespace (with vod: prefix).

-- MarkTaylor - 2016-04-19

Implementation and Validators

Please note your implementation or validator in this section.

TOPCAT

A pre-release version of TOPCAT that uses a VOSI-1.1-style tables endpoint (PR-20160413) is available at ftp://andromeda.star.bris.ac.uk/pub/star/topcat/pre/topcat-full_vosi11.jar. To use it, open the TAP window, point it at a VOSI-1.1 capable service (e.g. http://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/tap) and select from the TAP|Metadata Acquisition menu either "VOSI11-1step" or "VOSI11-2step". It seems to work. -- MarkTaylor - 2016-04-19

Comments from TCG members during RFC period: 2015-04-15 - 2015-05-27

WG chairs or vice chairs must read the Document, provide comments if any and formally indicate if they approve or do not approve of the Standard.

IG chairs or vice chairs are also encouraged to do the same, although their inputs are not compulsory.

TCG Chair & Vice Chair ( _Matthew Graham, Pat Dowler )

Applications Working Group ( _Pierre Fernique, Tom Donaldson )

Data Access Layer Working Group ( François Bonnarel, Marco Molinaro )

Data Model Working Group ( _Mark Cresitello-Dittmar, Laurent Michel )

Grid & Web Services Working Group ( Brian Major, Giuliano Taffoni )

Registry Working Group ( _Markus Demleitner, Theresa Dower )

Semantics Working Group ( _Mireille Louys, Alberto Accomazzi )

Education Interest Group ( _Massimo Ramella, Sudhanshu Barway )

Time Domain Interest Group ( _John Swinbank, Mike Fitzpatrick )

Data Curation & Preservation Interest Group ( Françoise Genova )

Operations Interest Group ( _Tom McGlynn, Mark Taylor )

Knowledge Discovery in Databases Interest Group ( George Djorgovski )

Theory Interest Group ( _Franck Le Petit, Carlos Rodrigo )

Standards and Processes Committee ( Françoise Genova)