No subject

reliability/interpretability of "semantic-free" cross-references, and
lurking dangers of loose service definitions, it sounds as though you are
beginning to lean toward the perspective that we can afford to be more
prescriptive about the "right way" to structure one's data and present
a "useful" interface to that data. While I don't want to push
too hard at this stage in one direction or another, I do think it's important
to respect the lurking danger of being so prescriptive that nobody
wants to take the big leap from the way they're already doing things
(presumably for some good reasons) to the way we've decided to look at things.

At any rate, your point below about focus is well taken. Believe it or not,
that is what I'm trying to do (in a vaguely academic, missive-oriented way).
Defining the behavior of the system would be a nice thing to accomplish...

Andrew

>
> I think it is more useful at this point to focus on:
>
> (1) the behaviour of the system we are trying to build - e.g. are tangential
> relationships derived from cross-references going to produce interpretable results?
> Are cross-references themselves going to be uniformly interpretable and reliable
> since they are optional and server dependent?  Is it "dangerous" to so loosely
> define the relationship between the input and output of a service?
>
> (2) the level of data complexity required to achieve this behaviour - e.g. how many
> ontologies do we need, how detailed do they need to be, how much data should we pass
> in our objects, should they be hierarchical or loose collections...
>
> (3)  the data formats - presumably XML, but how should we structure that data to
> achieve the behaviour and complexity we need?
>
> I have a lot of ideas about the behaviour of the system, and have discussed them at
> length both on and off the list... but certainly my conversations with Carole
> (myGrid) a few weeks ago opened my eyes to the potential dangers lurking in my
> approach.  I am still hashing out these things, especially with the myGrid people,
> though sadly much of this discussion is happening off the list.
>
> As I see it, we're in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment while we work out
> what role ontologies will play in determining MOBY behaviour, and whether or not
> these need to be built from scratch, or whether existing ontologies, such as those
> generated by the myGrid project, will work in the somewhat looser (currently) MOBY
> environment.  Once we have these nailed down, we will be in a much better position
> to decide what underlying technologies we need to achieve this...  I think the
> current discussion, though academically interesting, is likely a bit premature in
> its intensity and that the best implementation choices will become much clearer when
> we know for certain what exactly we need to achieve.
>
> I'm also convinced that there are some things that we will not be able to determine
> through debate and academic missives...  There are probably multiple equally valid
> ways to achieve the goal, though they may or may not be equally difficult to
> implement - I'm sure there will  be times when we'll just have to set things up and
> try them out!  :-)
>
> M
>
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------
> "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
>
>
>
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