[MOBY-l] Hmmm... ID objects or SpecificID objects??

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi group,

I've been setting up an example sequence retrieval service this
afternoon, but I hit a problem that I'd like to throw out to the group
for discussion.

Many services (eg. sequence retrieval services) will simply take an ID
number as input.  The problem is that ID numbers may be of many types...
GenbankGI, GenbankAcc, EMBLID, TIGR_Gene_ID, and so on and so on and so
on.  In principle, we could define an object like this:

        <ID  namespace="GenbankGI" id="1223647"/>


But since services register only the type of *object* that they deal
with, not the namespace that they accept, most services that claim to
accept ID numbers will not necessarily handle *all* types of ID's.

The alternative is to have separate objects for each type of ID:

        <GenbankGI  namespace="GenbankGI"  id="1223647"/>

But this seems like a nightmare scenario...or?

Hmmmmm....  do we change the registry, or do we make more objects?... or
do we just let the server decide if it is competent to handle that type
of ID number?

Hmmmmmmm.....


Mark



--
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"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
________________________________

Dr. Mark Wilkinson
Bioinformatics Group
National Research Council of Canada
Plant Biotechnology Institute
110 Gymnasium Place
Saskatoon, SK
Canada