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

[Frank Gibbons]

Hi Eddie,

At 11:34 AM 2/21/2006, you wrote:
>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... :-)

OK, I understand that it can't make a _routine_ visit unless it knows who 
to visit. But it should still be possible to call it, even if I haven't 
registered at all. Perhaps you could set up a form where I could put in my 
URL, click 'submit' , and then watch my web-logs to see if it comes. 
Perhaps better yet would be if you could provide some generic RDF, with no 
service-specific information, which would simply allow the agent to visit, 
and verify that it can read the RDF. It could then email me that it was 
able to read this "test RDF" on my site. Who knows, there might be problems 
not with the agent, but with my local configuration, and it would be nice 
to be able to verify that the whole infrastructure was working correctly, 
without complicating it with details of my services.

I'm just worried about going through a bunch of trouble to get ready for 
the agent, and then some unforeseen problem crops up (at either end), 
and  the agent's deployment is delayed by 6 weeks, and in the meantime, I'm 
unable to change my services. I'm not denigrating the agent, I just have 
recent personal (painful!) experience of how difficult it can be to debug 
things "over the wire".

-Frank

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