[MOBY-dev] MOBY 0.49 API online... nearly stable!

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi all, 

I'm c.c'ing this to the I3C in anticipation of the upcoming I3C hackathon, 
as we are hoping to do quite a bit of MOBY hacking at that event!  Many
thanks to the I3C for inviting MOBY-ers to their party!!  :-)

head-dump...

After all of the recent changes starting with last month's Singapore 
BioHackathon and then the MOBY-DIC-III meeting I finally sat down and 
I managed to get the entire API for MOBY Central (as I remember it ;-))
written up today.  I will continue writing the MOBY API over the next 
week or two as I find time.  Note that NONE OF THIS API is yet
implemented!!  In fact, the underlying database at MOBY Central is not
able to store the information required in the new API, so it is more
than just a matter of coding things up. Once complete, this document
will fully describe MOBY Central API/behaviour, the request/response 
structure and behaviour of MOBY Services, and the structure of MOBY
Objects, and the object Class hierarchy.  In order to accomodate 
the requirements of the Canadian and U.S. MOBY grants, we have agreed
to call this the 0.5 spec of the API; hopefully, however, this will be
stable for the next 8-12 months.  I am hoping that further development
on MOBY will take place on a separate 'branch', and (unless it becomes
necessary) changes will not creep back into this spec.

Unfortunately, at least for the next few weeks, the entire project is
broken until we get things coded up to this new spec.  Please feel
free to jump in and do some coding if you are so inclined!  I'm 
putting together the new database schema right now, and I'll commit 
that to the repository as soon as it is done so that we are all working
on the same SQL (at least, within any given implementation of the API)

On the bright side, the behaviour is ~identical to the original 
prototype that we have been using for the past year, but it is now 
possible to register much more complicated services, and some things 
that were ambiguous in the original API are now being stated concretely.

the 0.49 version of the spec is available here:

http://www.biomoby.org/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/BioMOBYAPI

and it will become 0.5 after I double-check it for sanity, errors, and 
as soon as I finish my head-dump of the object/service details.  
I will also include some examples
to help clarify some of the more peculiar points of the API and MOBY
behaviour.  Please feel free to use the Wiki as a whiteboard and add
your comments/criticisms/questions directly into the text - the more
feedback we get now the better.

Cheers all!

Mark


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