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

[Edward Kawas]

Hi Frank,

> 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.

This is kind of a chicken and the egg problem. The agent can't 
visit unless it knows who to visit. It can't know who to visit 
unless providers convert their services... :-) 

> 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'.

So currently, it is up to the administrator of a registry to 
set how often the agent would run, if at all, (easily be placed on a cron 
job). As for manually calling it, right now it can be called by 
performing a registerService call and only providing the signatureURL.
Manually calling it should cause the agent to come instantly.

Eddie