Ed Pozharski wrote: [snip]
If I understand your proposal and reference to SQL correctly, you want some scripting language that sounds like simple English. Is the advantage over existing APIs here that one does not need to learn Python, C++, (or, heaven forbid, FORTRAN)? I.e. programs would look like this
XML DOM is probably a better example of a standardized API to shoot for than SQL in this case. Regardless of which language or library you use, getChildNodes still does the same thing (at least conceptually).
If the recommendation is that crystallographers should be using an API for data stored in a standardized format instead of parsing it themselves, then it would seem to make sense to me that the API should also be standardized (ideally with a well-documented reference implementation).
In some sense this is monopolistic - but hopefully it'd be a benevolent monopoly. If I remember correctly, there was a time when the creator of Python referred to himself as the "benevolent dictator for life" of the project; and it turned out pretty well.
[snip]
Not necessarily a bad idea but now through the fog of time I remember something oddly reminiscent... ah, CNS! (for those googling for it it's not the "central nervous system" :).
I'm still impressed by the fact that a useful scripting language was implemented in fortran.
Pete
