[ogsa-d-wg] Who should maintain URIs for data formats, query languages, transfer protocols, etc.?

[Dave Berry]

All,

One set of gaps in the current data architecture concerns lists of URIs
for naming data formats, query languages, transfer protocols, access
interfaces, and similar entities.  We need URIs to name these things,
but it isn't clear who should (a) choose those URIs and (b) maintain
these lists.  Here are some possibilities: I'd appreciate your thoughts
and comments.

One possibility is that GGF should have a group specifically to do this
(possibly even the OGSA-D group ourselves).  As people request new URIs,
this WG could issue them, and record them in a central list.  Or, people
could submit URIs that they have defined themselves, and the WG could
maintain a list of them.

Another possibility is that each WG that defines an interface could
define any relevant sets of URIs.  This is along the lines of GFD.58
(which actually defines namespaces), and is the approach that ByteIO are
using.  The advantage of this is that the work is decentralised.  The
disadvantage is that the URIs may be used by more than one specification
(in fact we generally hope that this will be the case), so the burden of
maintaining the list may fall on people who are no longer involved.
Also, WGs are disbanded when their work is complete.

One important consideration is that many vendors will want to define
their own URIs.  E.g. a vendor may want a variant of SQL to be defined
with a URI under a namespace of that vendor.  Conversely, we can't
require every supplier to create their own URI, because many will not
bother to do so.

It's possible that we don't need a central list of all such URIs.  If
various groups define URIs themselves, then as long as users know which
URI applies to their case, they can use it successfully.  Volunteer
sites could record lists of commonly-used URIs.  The disadvantage of
this is that it may lead to synonyms, which might cause confusion.

Dave Berry
Research Manager, National e-Science Centre
15 South College St., Edinburgh
Tel: +44 131 6514039