Hi Gabriel: I agree that what you suggested is more robust. However, it is ultimately the mart owner's decision on how to name their marts as BioMart doesn't have such constraints. It may be best to send such suggestion/request directly to the owner for consideration.
Regards, Christina ________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gabriel Berriz Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 9:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [mart-dev] Feature request: version field for MartURLLocation records Hi everyone. Currently the mart info served by the following URL: http://www.biomart.org/biomart/martservice?type=registry is somewhat inconsistent in the values given in the "name" field of MartURLLocation records. Some of these values include a version number (e.g. "metazoa_mart_3") while others don't (e.g. "ensembl"). Of these two conventions, the latter supports more robust client software, since it does not require that this software accommodate for possible changes in the version number part of the name. It would be most convenient to separate the name information from the version information, by creating a separate version field. Hence, I propose the creation of a version field for MartURLLocation records, so that items such as <MartURLLocation database="metazoa_mart_3" default="1" displayName="ENSEMBL METAZOA 3 (EBI UK)" host="www.biomart.org<http://www.biomart.org/>" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="metazoa_mart_3" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" /> would be served instead as <MartURLLocation database="metazoa_mart_3" default="1" displayName="ENSEMBL METAZOA 3 (EBI UK)" host="www.biomart.org<http://www.biomart.org/>" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="metazoa" version="3" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" /> or <MartURLLocation database="metazoa_mart_3" default="1" displayName="ENSEMBL METAZOA 3 (EBI UK)" host="www.biomart.org<http://www.biomart.org/>" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="metazoa_mart" version="3" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" /> Would this be possible? Thanks in advance, Gabriel Berriz
