[MOBY-dev] Moby API/LSID (Was: dashboard)

[Martin Senger]

> I pointed you to this a couple of weeks ago and asked for your comments 
> (or at least, I think I did... maybe not to you directly, but to the 
> -dev list):
> 
> http://biomoby.open-bio.org/index.php/for-developers/moby_extensions
>
   Okay, this is the page I was hoping for. I am going to read it and make
comments. I missed its existence so far.
 
> The predicates have only recently been defined  for Service Instances 
> since we have just finished working with myGrid
>
   Mark, I think the sentence above describes the whole problem: it says
"we have just finished". But who are we? That's just you. And perhaps
Eddie. But who else is involved in what is going to happen with
relationship between myGrid and Biomoby? We, people on moby-dev list, do
not know (well, I should talk only for myself, sorry for that: I do not
know). You have been talking about myGrid for a long time, but I have not
seen any... well, not results, that would be too premature, but anything
we can discuss. Mark, you built the Biomoby ideas (your ideas) into a
running product, and you convinced people to build services
accrodingly. That's good, and you have flowers for it. But the project
will die if you keep it that way. You need more people to be involved in
the decisions what next - and we have started, not perhaps too
succesfully, but still - an RFC process. So why not to put the "myGrid
stuff", whatever it means, into a proposal and we can discuss it? But give
us some time to digest it.

> In any case, I've listed all of the predicates on the new website, and 
> am starting to document them now... slowly!
>
   Present them as a new RFC, not as something done - that would make me
feel better. And an RFC has deadline, so if people do not respond in time,
that's their decision, they cannot complain that they were put aside.

> Some of them I cannot document since they are in the mygrid namespace,
> and they aren't documented there (though I could guess).
>
   Sorry to say that, but it seems like nonsense. We are talking about an
interface (in whatever means, not necessarily an API) that will be used
by developers, so it must be expressed in a way the humans will understand
it.

> >   * Resolving LSID metadata has more steps than just to make an HTTP
> >connection and to get an RDF file. But I guess that we want to
> >recommend to use just this step. So we are slightly "abusing" (in a
> >possitive way) the LSID spec, but we do not document it.
> >  
> >
> Can you write a sentence that explains this?  I don't really understand 
> what you mean either...
>
   Starting point is "I have an LSID". And I want metadata describing
it. What are the steps to follow:
   1) Resolve the LSID to an endpoint.
   2) Call there a method getAvailableServices(myLSID)
      It gets back URls of all places that have anything to tell about
this particular LSID
   3) On each of this places you call getMetadata()

   My guess is that by "resolving LSID to metadata" you mean just the
third step, and only if this particular site provides the metadata using a
pure HTTP protocol, no SOAP. I am not saying that it is bad, but bad is
not to document it properly...
 
   Cheers,
   Martin

-- 
Martin Senger
   email: martin.senger at gmail.com
   skype: martinsenger
consulting for:
   International Rice Research Institute
   Biometrics and Bioinformatics Unit
   DAPO BOX 7777, Metro Manila
   Philippines, phone: +63-2-580-5600 (ext.2324)