Hi,
in view of the cross-WG debate on getting metadata from services, I have produced a new version of the VO Support Interfaces spec, which you may find at
http://www.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/IvoaGridAndWebServices/ VOSupportInterfacesMandatory-0.26.pdf
In this version I've tried to make the operations compatible with the suggested equivalents in DAL and TAP.
The operation that produces VOResources is split into getRegistration - that which the service author wishes to put in the registry - and getMetadata - all the resources, including those that should not be registered. This tries to cover the cases of volatile metadata which change too often for the registry to keep up.
The use of VOSI in REST systems is emphasized. In particular, in a REST system, the getMetadata and getRegistration operations can be implemented as any (HTTP) endpoint that produces the right kind of document. Therefore, the author of a DAL service might register, e.g., http://my.server.edu/dal-service/getCapabilities? FORMAT=VOTable, calling out a specific use of the DAL getCapabilities operation. Further, the registrationChangedOn and metadataChangedOn operations for a REST service are now just the normal HTTP headers for the registration and metadata documents; no need to implement extra operations and so less work.
I've de-emphasized the SOAP binding for VOSI, but it's still in there, unchanged from v0.25.
Normally, I'd suggest these changes on the GWS list before posting a new draft. Since we're so close to the Interop, I've taken the liberty of posting it anyway. It would be really nice to wrap up VOSI in Beijing.
Cheers,
Guy
Received on 2007-05-07Z20:05:06