[MOBY-l] re-thinking the MOBY-Central API

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi all,

pretty quiet on the list these days...  anyone there?

I've been writing a MOBY-Central CGI client and it has become clear that
the MOBY-Cental API needs a bit of a re-think.  In particular, I think
the following things need to be changed:

(1)  AuthURI + ServiceName  alone must be uniqe accross all services
(currently it is AuthURI + ServiceName + ServiceType).  This allows us
to use nicely formatted URI#Fragment identifiers (AuthURI#ServiceName)
to represent distinct services.

(2) I want to change the output of the locateServiceByType and
locateServiceByInput calls such that they return the following hash:
{AuthURI#ServiceName} = $serviceType

(3)  locateServiceByName will become retrieveServiceByName, and will
take a list of URI#Fragment's (as above) as input, outputting @wsdl.


The reason for these changes is mainly that there was no way to
determine service type from the output of any of the existing calls, so
a client was only able to present the service name and hope that the
user could guess what type of service that reprsented.  Now we get the
type and name together, and only call the wsdl on the ones we want,
cutting down traffic.  Please raise any objections ASAP, as I am going
to start coding this tomorrow.

I hope to have a CGI-based client running by the end of the week which
is able to iteratively execute a service transaction, locate valid
services for the resulting objects, and present these services as
options for the user to "click".... wish me luck!

I leave for Germany on Friday, and return on the 26th.  I will be in
sporadic contact during that time.  Hopefully we'll have some new
european MOBY recruits as a result of this trip :-)

Cheers all!

M


--
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"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
________________________________

Dr. Mark Wilkinson, RA Bioinformatics
National Research Council, Plant Biotechnology Institute
110 Gymnasium Place, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

phone : (306) 975 5279
pager : (306) 934 2322
mobile: markw_mobile at illuminae.com