[MOBY-dev] Registering 'arbitrary' SOAP services in MOBY Central

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi all, especially Martin, 

So, I think (touch wood) that MOBY Central should now be able to handle
registration of non-MOBY SOAP services.  Martin, since you have a couple
of hundred services ready to register, perhaps you can help me debug
this :-)

The process is as follows:

You use the MOBY Central "registerService" call exactly as usual, with
the following caveats:

1)  the <Category> is 'wsdl', not 'moby'

2)  the <Input> block contains <Simple> or <Collection> blocks with
exactly the same structure as those used for moby-type services,
HOWEVER, you declare the contained <objectType> and <Namespace> using
LSID's (more specifically, non-MOBY LSID's; i.e. the LSID's you use MAY
NOT begin with urn:lsid:biomoby.org:).  I'm not sure if the <Namespace>
block is meaningful in the context of non-MOBY services, but it is
available regardless... we can discuss its usefulness next time we chat.

3)  You DO NOT NEED to register your non-MOBY objectTypes or Namespaces
in the MOBY ontologies, nor MOBY Central - just pass the LSID for your
objectType/Namespace and MOBY Central will recognize that this refers to
a non-MOBY ontology and simply register it in the registry without
further interpretation/validation.

4)  Discovery proceeds as usual, you simply search for input(s) or
output(s) of the urn:lsid:* type, with Category 'wsdl', and call a GET
on the <URL> that is returned to you to get the WSDL for the service.

5)  You can register as many inputs/outputs as you wish for a given
service.  Interpretation of this is up to the client, I guess...

6)  the <URL> part of the message should be the URL to a WSDL document
describing your service (and *only* that service??? I think... since
WSDL documents can describe more than one service... or does the
serviceName tag sufficiently take care of that problem?)

Martin, please give it a try when you have a minute and tell me what
walls you hit w.r.t. interpretation of these instructions or bugs in the
registry.  I've tested simple things, but you have a clearer idea of
what the registry needs to do than I do, so you will be a better spoiler
for it.

We have to decide how to handle services that have moby-input and
non-moby output, or v.v., since MOBY has a specific message format, and
other SOAP services do not.... hmmm...

Cheers!

Mark


-- 
Mark Wilkinson <markw at illuminae.com>
Illuminae