mango

Mango proposal

Mark CD comments

Models

• Mango:
  • I've sumbitted Issues to the Mango repository with comments/suggestions on the model.
  • Parameter.description: is this a modeled concept?
    • there is some question (in my mind anyway) on whether something like this is a modeled concept (ie: an attribute on an object), since it can apply to any object, is completely arbitrary, often not included, and in no way contributes to the definition of the object itself.
    • the alternative is to not included it in the Model element(s), but let the Annotation address it in some way.
      "Any object may have a description. If supported by the implementation, the value is pulled from the VOTable DESCRIPTION sub-node of the associated PARAM|FIELD|TABLE" (we don't annotate GROUPs I think).

Annotations

• Annotating content within a VOTable element (PARAM, FIELD, etc)
  This came up in the context of mango:Param.description where, if this is a modeled element, we may want to populate it from the VOTable content. However, the VOTable DESCRIPTION element cannot be referenced, it is internal to other VOTable elements (PARAM, FIELD, GROUP, TABLE).
  • The annotation syntax Laurent uses (Vodml-instance-vot) has elements (SC_*) which are supposed to handle this sort of problem.
    • Section 3.12 describes these "shortcuts"
      • example case (Quantity) illustrates annotating an ivoa:Quantity using this syntax.
        • uses independent ATTRIBUTEs for the Quantity.value and Quantity.unit
      • The SC_*QUANTITY tags consolidate this grouping into a single annotation tag.
      • Question: is there no way to assign a Quantity.unit from the 'unit' arg of PARAM|FIELD?
    • given the description in Section 3.12, I do not see how it satisfies this case of annotating content within a VOTable element atom.

LM answers

MANGO

• Although all use-cases are supported by Mango, some weakness have been pointed out. They have been issued on the MANGO pages and will be subject to a major PR after the workshop.

Annotations

• unit element shouldn't be mandatory in SC*QUANTITY. This part of the spec must be enhanced.