[DAS2] format information for the reference server

[Andreas Prlic]

On 13 Mar 2006, at 14:00, Andrew Dalke wrote:

> Summary of questions:
>    - what does it mean for the annotation server to list the formats
>        available from the reference server?

should this happen? I thought that annotation servers are described by 
their "coordinate system"
then the registry provides a list of available references servers that 
provide the sequences for this.

> Something's been bothering me about the segments request.
>
> Currently the DAS sources request responds with something like
>
> <SOURCES>
>    <SOURCE>
>     <VERSION>
>       <CAPABILITY type="segments" query_url="http://blah/seq">
>          <FORMAT name="fasta" />
>          <FORMAT name="agp" />
>       </CAPABILITY>
>    ...
> </SOURCES>
>
> This says "go to 'blah' for information about the sequence".
>
> But it says more than that.  It provides metadata about
> the reference server.  It says that the reference server can
> respond in 'fasta' and 'agp' formats.

I think an annotation server should not know/provide this information
this should come from the reference server / registry



> If a client sees multiple CAPABILITY elements for the same
> query_url is it okay to merge the list of supported formats?

that does not sound clean.

> That is, if server X says that annotation server A supports
> fasta and server Y says that A supports genbank then a client
> may assume A supports both fasta and genbank formats?
> (This makes sense to me.)

the client should ask the reference server directly what it speaks /
rely on the registration server to have validated that server A speaks
indeed what  it says it does.

Andreas






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Andreas Prlic      Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
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