Arrays issue - Re: [dfdl-wg] Issues: additional data types

[Robert E. McGrath]

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Mike Beckerle wrote:

In case there is any misuderstanding:  I think Mike's approach
is fine.

It focuses on what I think is the main issue, which is how to talk
about the indexing.  IMO, the main point of an array is that it
is a blob with an index scheme.


> re: Space - a space penalty only occurs if your DFDL implementation
> actually converts the data into XML. My personal plans for DFDL would do
> none of that. You would incur zero space penalty. I want to reemphasize
> here, that the "index attributes" x and y in my example, would take up
> exactly zero space. They have no representation. Their values are inferred
> by the positon of the elements of the array.

Sure. But sometimes people need to pass the data as XML, and if they
do, it's going to be an issue.

>
> re: algorithms - DFDL doesn't address APIs for access to data at all.

My earlier email had several unstated assumptions.

I'm approaching this from a grid perspective, especially, service
composition.

The 'algorithms' I'm thinking of are what a client does to construct
a request for specific elements of an array from a server, and what
the server must do to provide the data in the way the requester wants
it.

I'm assuming DFDL is used in this protocol.