Fw: [infod-wg] notes on the INFOD spec

Thu Dec 8 11:11:03 CST 2005

Stephen,

Answers to your questions...

Thks,
Cecile

--- Forwarded by Cecile Madsen/Santa Teresa/IBM on 12/08/2005 08:48 AM
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             "Stephen Davey"                                               
             <sdavey at nesc.ac.u                                             
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                                                                   Subject 
                                       [infod-wg] notes on the INFOD spec  
             12/08/2005 05:29                                              
             AM                                                            

Hi there,
While I was doing my use case and sequence diagrams there were a few things
that I was unsure about or didn’t understand in the INFOD spec:

   1. How do you find/list/discover vocabularies already in the INFOD
      Registry? Is it by using GetMData?
            - that is the only mechanism now, as we don't have 'list'
      functions
   2. I got a bit confused about the difference between user property
      vocabs and user data vocabs and the sentence
      “/vocab:Type   Required. One of 2 values: ‘INFOD_Property_Vocabulary’
      or ‘INFOD_User_Vocabulary’.” mentioned in section 3.6.1.  Should the
      type INFOD_User_Vocabulary be replaced by INFOD_Data_Vocabulary?
            - yes user vocabulary = data vocabulary - inconsistencies
      should be fixed
            - user vocabulary allows subscriber to define the subscription
      predicates; property vocabulary defines terms and
              properties about a particular infod entity (like for ex a
      consumer)
   3. Perhaps in section 2 you should describe *why* you need to
      distinguish between property & data vocabs.
            - ok
   4. Also in section 2 (at the top of page 7) you say “INFOD vocabularies
      are XML schema”, but then you say user data vocabs can be non-XML.
      When you register a vocabulary do you need identify that it is
      non-XML?
            - not addressed yet but we should
   5. When do you need to create vocab instances? Is this when you want to
      populate your inventory?
            - as in the car ex, a vocabulary for car dealers is a template,
      pre-defined; a car dealer registers itself to the
      domain of car dealers by creating a vocab instance for it (provides
      its own specifications); that way, the car dealer
              when it defines itself as a 'publisher' can associate to that
      publisher info the specific vocab instance just created. It is
      just a way for publishers to advertize in a common la
      nguage/vocabulary what they can do/who they are.
   6. Can a subscriber (or a publisher) add a consumer to the INFOD
      Registry?
            - should be ok. We haven't addressed authorization issues and
      INFOD model doesn't restrict anything itself
   7. How do you specify the consumers for a particular subscription? Is
      this where the entity associations make an appearance?
            - in infod, a subscription is just a query, a request. So yes,
      the only way to associate another entity to the subscription
      entity is to use the association
   8. There is a typo in the first paragraph of section 3.7.1. It keeps
      mentioning user data vocabs, whereas it should talk about
      associations between an INFOD entity and other INFOD entities.
            - you're right. this will be fixed.

I wonder if some sort of generic example (perhaps as an appendix)  might be
useful in order to describe how all the bits can fit together and in what
order you would typically do things e.g. create vocabs, define publishers &
subscribers, add consumers, etc. This might become apparent to people if
they also read the use case document, but they might not want to go off to
another big document to try to find the info.
I had the following steps in my use case and I would have thought that they
would re-occur quite commonly:

      1.       Create vocabularies.
      2.       Register the vocabularies with the INFOD Registry.
      3.       Add Publishers (with a policy defined to ensure that it is
      notified if any new associations are added that relate to
      subscriptions and consumers).
      4.       Add Subscribers to the INFOD Registry.
      5.       Add Consumers, identifying their roles and characteristics.
      6.       Add Subscriptions to the INFOD Registry.
      7.       Create Associations between the Subscription entities and
      the Consumer entities. (Publisher will be informed that this new
      association has been created.)

Cheers,  Stephen.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Davey,  NextGrid Software Architect,
National e-Science Centre,
15 South College St., Edinburgh, EH8 9AA, UK
Tel: +44 131 6 509820
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