Hello Markus,
Some quick comments about the three topics:
1- Filter parameters:
I do remember we have discussed about that before, but somehow I had the impression that we didn't come to any concrete conclusion (and if we did, I think that's something we left out of the integration document, so, I'm sorry if I forgot about this detail...). Anyway, I definitely agree that it would be better if we could have it formalized as an attribute.
2- Include directives
Not sure if there'll be significant benefits here, but if someone could give an interesting example of such functionality, maybe we can consider it.
3- "IndexingElementExplosion"
I already included a comment in the wiki. I really think that's a "non-problem"...
Best Regards, -- Renato
On 21 Oct 2005 at 19:40, Döring, Markus wrote:
Hi Roger & Renato, I somehow wasn't subscribed to the list properly, so I nearly repeated all of Renatos comments on the wiki without being aware of this mail ...
I think we said earlier that all parameters in views should be optional by nature - this is also how the pywrapper implements it. Does it make sense for any view to have mandatory parameters in filters? If a parameter is not being used in the actual view call, then this part of the filter should be ignored. Otherwise it would evaluate to false and therefore no AND combinations of parameters would be possible. But if we have a view exposing only one parameter, lets say the objectID, and this one is not given - that also doesnt make too much sense. So this could be a case where a parameter is required. >From the formal aspect I support Renatos idea of having another flag "optional" or "required" to indicate this. We could also use an attribute "use='required'" as in attribute definitions in xml schema. By default I think all parameters should be optional.
Most of the changes are included now in the current schema proposal, but views are still a separate category in capabilities. I dont mind to change this the way renato showed below.
One other issue to discuss is importing/including directives in views and schemas. Would it be of great value to have includes in views?
If so, would we need include directives on the base of the protocol:
<include href="dwc_base.xml"> or should we define xml processing instructions like this: <?include href="dwc_base.xml" ?> If we want to be able to do includes at any place in a document, I think we have to go for PIs. Just something to think about if you are bored.
But my main concern is still the IndexingElementExplosion: http://ww3.bgbm.org/protocolwiki/IndexingElementExplosion I hope to have some new ideas about the explosion in my next mail.
Thanks, Markus