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

Martin Senger senger at ebi.ac.uk
Fri Apr 4 08:52:19 UTC 2003


> A "collection" is considered a single piece of input data, but that
> single piece of input data is composed of many objects.  A 'simple'
> input is a single object.  There can be any number and any combination
> of simple and/or collection data inputs to a service.
>
   Okay, confusion solved. But my suggestion still pending: why does the
API need to allow a collection with elements of (possibly) more different
types?
   Or, on the same note: how can I express a service that has more input 
sequences. I do not know how many, but I know they are all of the same 
type. And example would help.

   Another question regarding input data: why do we need secondary inputs
at all? Please stop crying now :-) - I know that it was me who asked for
them in the first place. But why? Because registry supposed to generate
WSDL for a service. And for that it needs to know about all inputs. Is 
this still valid reason (in other words is registry going to generate 
WSDL)? Or are there other situations where registry can use the complete 
set of input data types?

> There is no equivalent of a "collection" for Secondary inputs, though as
> with the Primary inputs, there may be any number of Secondary inputs to
> a service.
>
   I see that there is no equivalent. That's why I have suggested to have 
it. Any reason why not to treat all input data in the same way? 

> I need to spend more time in general explaining what we mean by
> "authority", as it might be confusing to many people... especially since
> we assign authority to a transformation rather than a datatype.
>
   My suggestion was simpler: do authority, or authURI and provider mean
the same in the API? If yes, use only one trem for it. If not, define 
them.
 
> >    Do I really need to include the whole Parameter definition? On
> >    another place the API says that I can query "by name from the Class
> >    ontology". It seems better to me.
> 
> Well... effectively you are querying by Class name, since the only
> things in a Simple parameter is Class name and optional namespace...
>
   I see there more: parameterName, objectType name and namespace name. 
And for collections it can be even more. But the API could be simpler - 
just name (or two, if you need namespace as well).
 
   Martin

-- 
Martin Senger

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