[MOBY-dev] {Spam?} Re: The Agent behaviour - discussion and questions to the MOBY community

[Paul Gordon]

Sorry, I should have expressed this more clearly. I definitely agree 
with you that if you don't provide a signature URL, you shouldn't be 
deregistered.  But, if you did provide one, you must maintain it.
>> 1. The RDF is a contract of sorts.  If you are not committed enough to
>> keep the RDF available for download, your service should be
>> deregistered.
>>     
>
>
> Paul, you are not expressing yourself precisely. I agree that the RDF is a
> contract. But if I do not sign to such contract (by not providing an RDF
> signature URL) I should not be kick off (but my service should be considered
> "testing"). I was very happy that we (at least me and Mark) seemed to have
> consensus on this. Are you telling the same, or are you disagree (and
> opening this can of worms again)?
>   
This is where we disagree.  As I said earlier, we have an opportunity to 
enforce robustness in the protocol, and I think we should take it.  
Obviously, the test case the service provider lists can be a fairly 
simple one, it is up to them.  Which is more useful to the biologist, 
knowing a service is reachable (empty ping), or knowing it works (test 
case)?

The appropriateness of an empty ping vs. a functional ping probably 
boils down to where we expect the "robustness score" to be store, by 
MOBY Centrals, or does each client instance store its own?
>> 2. I think the ping should be mandatory, with a valid input test case.
>>     
>
>
> The valid input test cases are nice - and we can use them: we have all the
> machinery in place. Which is: an LSID resolution service to get test input
> data from a service provider, the predicate name for that, and
> MOBY_Environment project that can use this test data to check services (of
> course, you can use your own checking calls).
>    But: it is beyond what a simple ping should do. Simple ping should not do
> that much and it will still be useful to get fast and cheap reply if a
> service (or at least its server) is up and running.
>    So I am just for the ping described by Pieter. Nothing more. (And I have
> it implementd in Perl Moses already.)
>
>
> Martin
>
>
>