[MOBY-dev] Re: [MOBY] join operations

[Mark Wilkinson]

On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 11:14, Phillip Lord wrote:

> There is no reason that this should not be implemented by a base
> class. There is no intrinsic reason, for example, why a service
> provider should not forward results onto another service, rather than
> return it directly to the client. 

Right - but that is somewhat tangential to my objection...  my worry is
putting the onus of interpreting arbitrary complex queries on a service
provider who simply wants to return you a genbank record in response to
a genbank ID.  If a service provider *wants* to set up such a complex
service, that is entirely different.  I just don't want it to be an
"expectation" of a service provider to perform joins on data which may
or may not reside on his/her machine.  As you point out below, this
level of complexity could be handled by a base class.  So long as the
service provider can mindlessly return what it was asked for without
having to interpret the higher-level query I would feel comfortable.

Do you see this base class being part of the service, or more like an
'agent'?


 
> I understand your reservations, but think that they may not be so much
> of a problem as you think.

I tend to be quite reactionary :-)  ...eventually I come around...

M


-- 
=======================================================================
                                    |--==\
Mark Wilkinson                       \==-|       1001010010010001001010
Bioinformatics Consultant             \=/        0010010010100101110010
Illuminae Media                       /-\        0010101110110100100101
727 6th Ave. N.                      /-==|       0010100100111101010010
Saskatoon, SK, Canada               |==-/        0101001000100101001011
S7K 2S8                              \=/         0100100100010010010101
+1 (306) 373 3841                     /\         1110101101110101001001
markw at illuminae.com                  /=-\        1101001010100101010101
                                    |--==\
=======================================================================