Well, we had that discussion before in the group, and came to the result that is should be a standard. I checked the mailing list, this was discussed in 2003 already. Actually, the agreement once was, IIRC, to have a language independedn spec, with language bindings as appendix. We later thought that the doc gets too long, and also delayed by the bindings, we split that up: language independend spec, informal bindings. Later someone proposed to do the bindings as specs as well, to give them more weight, and people did not care either way too much. I can dig out the old notes and mails if that is of interest, but I think we should not reopen too many issues over and over again, once they have been settled - we are running circles otherwise... my 2 cent, Andre. Quoting [Steven Newhouse] (Feb 09 2006):
Yes, its an API specification.
Can an abstract API in SIDL be a recommendation ?
I would say not. We had this discussion in OGSA-WG with the BES (and ByteIO) work. A SIDL is not a normative description of the interface, unless there is defined mechanism for mapping from SIDL to a language binding. The conversation we had on the telecon indicated that SAGA-RG would not be producing a defined mapping mechanism, hence the need for the language bindings to be the bit that is standardised.
Having a standards track SIDL and standards track binding seems an overkill.
Steven
-- "So much time, so little to do..." -- Garfield