Changes to VOSpace specification

[Dave Morris]

Paul Harrison wrote:

>> We are designing a SOAP webservice - so why add yet another syntax  
>> for calling methods.
>> If we didn't already have a SOAP service, then you might have a case.
>
> because a major thing that people want to be able to do is use a URL  
> to identify a dataset when publishing a paper for instance - if views  
> are allowed that alter the presentation of data, then it is not  
> really very pretty to have to write a chunk of xml that represents  
> the call to VOSpace to be able to make the statement - "get this  
> dataset with this particular view" as a reference in a paper.  
> However, it is not a showstopper for 1.0 - but something to consider  
> for the future. If we can find a good compromise between the  
> advantages of SOAP with some REST-like semantics in the vos: URI, it  
> would be appreciated by the users.

Ok - I take your point.
Would this work (once we have links in VOSpace version-1.1) :

A right-click menu option in the UI that lets you create a 'citation 
link' to the target object.
The link properties contain
    The [vos://..] URI of the target object.
    The URIs of the current view and format.
    Plus any additional properties required to retrieve the data (e.g. 
search criteria applied to a 'virtual container').

In effect, the CitationLink holds a snapshot of the information that was 
used to select a particular view of the target object.
The view can then be referred to using just the [vos://...] URI of the 
CitationLink.

The links would be created in the users own space - even if the target 
object was in another space.
So the user could create a separate directory in their home space 
containing all of the citation links for each of their papers.
The CitationLink behaves like a normal link so the default action is to 
redirect the client to the target object, using the view, format and 
params stored in the link properties.

This would be similar to the way that this works :
    [http://tinyurl.com/y6f8fr]

which underneath is actually doing this :
    [http://preview.tinyurl.com/y6f8fr]

For a citation in a paper, you could create two 'citation links' or 
'citation views', one that gives you the raw votable view, and another 
that gives you a PDF or HTML view for publication.

Hmmm, interesting ... this could have useful applications beyond citations.
If we make it a generic behavior that links can store not only the 
target URI, but other information like view, format etc. then this could 
be useful in creating workflows etc.

Thanks,
Dave