US (NVO/VAO) opinions on HTTP GET in VOSpace 2.0

[Dave Morris]

On 29/09/09 21:09, Doug Tody wrote:
>
> I meant a HTTP URL, although in principle a VOSpace URL could be
> possible as well. But for maximum flexibility and to avoid requiring
> VOSpace-specific capabilities on the client side HTTP would be required
> (hence simple clients, tools like wget/curl etc. could be used for
> retrieval even if the service stores the dataset in a local VOSpace).

In which case, you might as well use a standard webserver to supply the 
data.
If you return a http:// URL in the SIA acref, then even if the client 
was VOSpace capable it wouldn't know that the data was stored in a 
VOSpace service.

There would be no way for a client to figure out that
	http://nvo.caltech.edu/public/mydata/table1.vot
referred to a file it should download but
	http://nvo.caltech.edu/vospace/mydata/table1?view=ivo://net.ivoa/views/votable-1.1
referred to something in VOSpace.

If standard HTTP GET works for your data, then please use a webserver.
If you just want to serve data using HTTP GET there is no need to use 
VOSpace, and no need to modify the VOSpace specification to meet this 
use case.
VOSpace was intended to meet the other cases where we need to have 
asynchronous control and more robust transfer protocols for large data 
transfers.

Dave