Re: Next meeting (VOQL-TEG#3)

From: Patrick Dowler <patrick.dowler-at-nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:00:12 -0800


On Friday 12 January 2007 05:55, Pedro Osuna wrote:
> +VOQL-TEG-1/AI#6 on ALL: To send to list inputs on preferences to have
> the UPLOAD (whether in the Protocol or in the Service)
> open

My feeling on this one is that UPLOAD should be part of the service spec and not part of the language. It will always be a separate step from any query, so all one really needs is a way to upload a table and find out (via return value?) what to call it in subsequent queries.

Possibly the upload could include a table name the user would prefer, but you then get into issues with collisions and having to decide if that is an error, if the service can just return a different name, etc... details.

> +VOQL-TEG-1/AI#7 on FO (plus DT/KA): to propose a mechanism for getting
> table metadata within the TAP and possible output format
> open

Given the format=metadata usage in other DAL services (well, SIA 1.0 anyway) and returned VOTable, it would seem we should follow that same style. Given that you need name, datatype, units, and ucd for each column of a table it would basically be the same. But, this works for single tables only, eg format=metadata&table=foo... we would still need a way to get a list of tables and a descriptor (ucd) saying what a row in that table IS or means.

Maybe format=metadata returns a list of tables with names and descriptors, and format=metadata&table=$name returns the details for that table.

The details for a table may also include indications about (i) which columns are indexed, (ii) which columns are unique, (iii) which columns are keys for joining other tables (if/when we decide to support join, which may not be in TAP at all).  

PS-25th is fine for me

-- 

Patrick Dowler
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Received on 2007-01-12Z18:57:34