[MOBY-dev] data by reference - a request for comments

[Martin Senger]

> What i dont understand is why do we need references for only primitives ? I
> dont understand what a reference for a primitive is good for ?


If you do not understand, it is my fault - I have tried to explain it, but
obviously  have not done it well.

The discussion is now, however, a bit farer.Your first question is probably
obsolete - the forming RFC seems to be that the references will be able to
be anywhere (or not only on primitives).

Your second question: We need to allow reference on primitives if we want to
reuse existing references on not-yet-moby objects (such as uniprot
sequences).

The same with URLs of existing images - as in your use case. What you are
describing is exactly what we are going to do. You will have a choice: a)
You store somewhere an XML moby message (its part) and send a reference to
it, or b) you store somewhere only the image (not wrapped in a moby message)
and you send a moby message with a reference attached to a primitive.

Martin

-- 
Martin Senger
email: martin.senger at gmail.com,m.senger at cgiar.org
skype: martinsenger