[MOBY-dev] A need for Moby 1.0.0.1?

[Paul Gordon]

Hi all,

I was talking off-list with Eddie and I think I found a problem with the 
current spec vis-a-vis LSIDs.  Currently, there is no way to figure out 
a given registry what its LSID authority is.  This means you can't 
reliably resolve metadata about objects without hardcoding the 
authority.  For example, if I want to resolve the meta data for a 
service such as TrimVectorSeqs @ moby.ucalgary.ca the LSID is

urn:lsid:biomoby.org:serviceinstance:moby.ucalgary.ca,TrimVectorSeqs

which I can fetch and get all kinds of wonderful details about the 
service, including in the future things like test cases.  The problem is 
that the biomoby.org part only works for stuff registered at the main 
Moby Central server.  If I want to use the INB central server, there is 
currently no way for the registry to tell me what to put in the LSID 
where the "biomoby.org" normally is.  I need this, for example, so that 
MobyService.getService(name, authority, registry) can fetch all the 
details of the service and create a meaningful MobyService object from 
RDF (as that's the direction we are heading).  This is the last bit of 
my jMOBY code that doesn't support multiple registries, so it's serious 
stumbling block.

My proposal is that we a new method something like the current  
retrieveResourceURLs method, but called 
retrieveResourceLSIDAuthorities.  The output would look like:

<resourceLSIDAuthorities>
       <Resource name="Service" authority="biomoby.org">
       <Resource name="Object" url="biomoby.org"/>
       <Resource name="Namespace" authrity="biomoby.org"/>
       <Resource name="ServiceInstance" url="inb.es"/>
</resourceLSIDAuthorities>

In this particular case, the registry is using the standard data type, 
namespace and service type definitions, but has its own list of service 
instances...such a mirror probably may not exist at the moment, but you 
get the point.

Thoughts?

-Paul