[MOBY-dev] Notice that the ever elusive agent will start curating in 2 weeks

[Frank Gibbons]

Eddie, Mark, Martin, & others,

I have to second Martin's comments below. We tried this RDF agent once 
before, and some of us dutifully followed the link provided to create the 
RDF, and we placed it in the appropriate spot. Then we found that the agent 
never came, and we could no longer remove our services at all! I propose 
that you start the agent before we convert our services - I'd like to see 
the agent come and visit a few times before I hand over control of my 
services to it.

So I think we need to know the two very specific things that Martin 
mentions: how often will it come, and how do we ask it to come? The 
policies don't have to be set in stone, but we need to know what is 
proposed, and to agree upon it. In particular, for people who are 
developing services, there has to be a way to cause a service to be 
registered within a short time (I would propose less than 60 seconds). I'd 
like to have a dry run, in which I ask the agent to come, and then - hey 
presto! - there it is, within the required interval. It wouldn't have to do 
anything, just come over and say 'hi'.

As to his second point (that use of RDF-document is now mandatory for 
services to be considered registered), I also agree: there should at least 
be some kind of grandfather-clause. People who want the extra security of 
being able to guarantee that their service will remain registered until 
they take down the RDF document, should be able to do that; but others, who 
simply wish to register by function-call should also be able to use that.

Is there a reason that both systems cannot coexist? I understand the 
necessity of cleaning up the registry, and wonder if that is driving this 
decision on mandatory-RDF, since it would automatically clear out the 
abandoned services. At the very least (and I contradict myself here), there 
could be a phase-out/in period, during which services registered under the 
old system can remain, but all new services must be created using RDF. Then 
after three (?) months, such old services might be retired - or perhaps 
kept on indefinitely. They would be the _only_ services which would 
continue to be deregistered using the function-call syntax - all new 
registrations would have to use RDF.

-F

At 07:52 PM 2/20/2006, you wrote:
>   I have not seen an answer to the most pertinent question that we always
>had about the RDF agent: How can we ask it to come? And how often does it
>come if we do not ask?
>    And please do not tell me that I cannot ask - if that would be the
>case, please do not start it yet.
>
> > In 2 weeks, the agent will start removing services that do not have a
> > signature url specified for it.
> >
>    I strongy oppose this - and I said it several times. Please do not
>do that. It was never said that services must have the signature URL - it
>was always said that services without such signature are vulnerable to be
>remove by some malicious guys. But a mandatory existence of such signature
>URL has never been in the Biomoby API, and if you do what you are saying,
>it is breaking API without consulting us/users.





PhD, Computational Biologist,
Harvard Medical School BCMP/SGM-322, 250 Longwood Ave, Boston MA 02115, USA.
Tel: 617-432-3555       Fax: 
617-432-3557       http://llama.med.harvard.edu/~fgibbons