[MOBY-dev] Moby Collections (was: Problems with Biomoby servicesin Taverna 1.2)

[Martin Senger]

> because a collection of collections is not allowed afaik.
>
   You are right - I have forgotten that we cannot have collections of 
collections. So we cannot model all possible scenarios.
   But: BioMoby (afaik) tries to be simple. To allow completely complex
data types (build on collections of collectios) would mean to assume that
all clients will be able to understand such complex data types. And it
would be hard. We would end up anyway with many clients that would simply
ignore such complex types (or they break on them).
   So why not to go with the current API (I may even argue if it is really
neccessary to allow a collection having different types of Simples, but
that's another story) and to try to solve the problem of semantically 
relevant clusters on the service level - simply to create more specific 
service instances. BioMoby was/is about a simple transformation. If the 
transformation is not simple let's try to divide it into more 
transformations that can be simple.

   Cheers,
   Martin

PS.
> but I'm not sure if it is appropriate to compare the concept of
> Simples/Collections to general data types in programming languages.
>
   Why not? Except that biomoby collections are less general (by not 
allowing coles of coles).
   M.

-- 
Martin Senger

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