root element, meta element

[skeys]

An XML document must have a single "root element" that contains all other elements. For MPC submissions, this is pretty clearly observationBatch but I wasn't sure if that made sense for other (non-submission) uses. I had been thinking maybe just observations could serve as a root element in cases where there was no submission header. But my recent proposal on versioning would need a place for schema information. Mixed in with the observations doesn't seem best. A separate root element would be better. Maybe all ADES XML files should have the same root element. We could just say this is observationBatch so a non-submission might look like

<observationBatch>
  <xsd-1.0>
    ...
  </xsd-1.0>
  <observations>
    ...
  </observations>
</observationBatch>

Or we use a meta tag like HTML to contain things such as schema information:

<observationBatch>
  <meta>
    <xsd-1.0>
      ...
    </xsd-1.0>
  </meta>
  <observations>
    ...
  </observations>
</observationBatch>

I don't have strong feelings either way about a meta tag.

Finally, are we happy with "observationBatch" as a root element? How about simply "ades"?

[schastel]

Finally, are we happy with "observationBatch" as a root element? How about simply "ades"?

"observationBatch" would make more sense. "ades" does not correspond to the document contents: the document does not contain a standard but information that complies to it. Metonymy is acceptable still but may introduce confusion.

Since there are apparently at the moment:

• observations, made by the community, sent to the mpc (up to it to accept or reject them);
• observations sent by the mpc (accepted) to the community;
• ephemerides/reductions made by the community.

I would suggest 3 acceptable roots identifying the contents.

• observationBatch
• disseminationBatch
• reductionBatch The contents of each will be different. Let's take OBS_ID for instance. Since it is assigned by the MPC, it must not be in observationBatch and must be in disseminationBatch.

[skeys]

abandoned