IVOA Note on UCD maintenance

[Francois Ochsenbein]

Hi Andrea,

I'm sharing exactly the same worries about the ivoa: prefix --
it does not simplify anything, and will just reduce the IVOA-wide 
interoperability, at least on the mid-term if not on the long term...

Cheers, Francois

>
>Dear Andrea,
>
>
>I think the procedure is quite thorough and reflects all the steps we
>suggested in the initial document on UCD.
>
>I am worried though about allowing the identifier "ivoa:" as namespace
>for those UCDs already approved but temporarily out of the UCD standard
>(as this one will only be updated once or twice a year).
>
>What this might end up is with loads of systems using not-yet-standard
>UCDs, different from one proposal to the other, and all of them starting
>with the same identifier "ivoa:". Even worse, probably the data provider
>will write the "ivoa:" ucd, and probably won't change it to the "real"
>one when the UCD is standardised.
>
>A possible solution for this problem would be to allow for specific
>namespaces for specific needs (let's say, like a "solar:" namespace for
>solar physics specific UCDs) but this again seems to go in the debate on
>whether this should be relegated to data models or not, which I think is
>not worth to retake now.
>
>Just my two cents.
>
>Cheers,
>P.
>
>

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Francois Ochsenbein       ------       Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
   11, rue de l'Universite F-67000 STRASBOURG       Phone: +33-(0)390 24 24 29
Email: francois at astro.u-strasbg.fr   (France)         Fax: +33-(0)390 24 24 32
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