Deprecate or clarify use of accessURL/format outside of the distribution array

[JoshData]

If you have two accessURLs, should you do this:

{
   "accessURL": "url1",
   "distributions": [
     { "accessURL": "url2" }
   ]
}

or

{
   "accessURL": "url1",
   "distributions": [
     { "accessURL": "url1" },
     { "accessURL": "url2" }
   ]
}

[kvuppala]

I would assume distribution to have have everything, and the primary one can be used at the root level.

below are the usage instructions for the field from the POD schema page.

Field distribution
Cardinality (0,n)
Required No
Accepted Values See Usage Notes
Usage Notes Distribution is a concatenation, as appropriate, of the following elements: accessURL and format. If an entry has only one dataset, enter details for that one; if it has multiple datasets (such as a bulk download and an API), separate entries as seen below:

"distribution": [
{
"accessURL": "https://explore.data.gov/views/ykv5-fn9t/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD",
"format": "text/csv"
},
{
"accessURL": "https://explore.data.gov/views/ykv5-fn9t/rows.json?accessType=DOWNLOAD",
"format": "application/json"
},
{
"accessURL": "https://explore.data.gov/views/ykv5-fn9t/rows.xml?accessType=DOWNLOAD",
"format": "text/xml"
}
]

[mhogeweg]

+1 on approach 2. one thought on the distribution element. if you look at the results in data.gov, many items have 10 or more links, many of which are not to a downloadable file, but to a web page, or application (another web page) or web service. would help client app developers tremendously if the accessURL can be qualified: download, online access, info page, organization page, ... (some to be defined vocabulary).

[gbinal]

@JoshData - Approach 2.

I would actually think that the top level accessURL should be removed, though, or do you think that is a mistake?

@mhogeweg - What you're referencing is addressed in the schema guidance and is being affirmed to agencies in feedback about their data.json files. Documentation is not a guarantee against bad metadata, whether it's flawed implementation now or just left over from an earlier era. My suggestion is that any time you find bad metadata at agency.gov/data.json, you use the feedback mechanism that should be at agency.gov/data to report the problem. Data.gov is undergoing a major overhaul this month that will migrate it to presenting solely results of harvested data.json files, so any bad metadata you're finding at data.gov should go away soon, or at least be traceable to it's source.

[JoshData]

@gbinal Thanks.

If I remember, I'll open a PR to mention this in the schema doc. Can we keep this issue open until it's clarified in the docs?

Agreed about removing the top-level accessURL. There is something nice, perhaps, about having a "primary" distribution, but if that's a goal it should be done inside distributions.

[philipashlock]

My preference would be to not use accessURL outside of distribution whatsoever. Obviously it's too late to define that in the schema, but would it be too extreme to provide documentation that states that it's recommended (but not required) for accessURL to always be defined in a distribution? Either way, I would prefer accessURL to not be used on its own if distribution is used

[philipashlock]

Just to reiterate, my recommendation is for accessURL and format to always be used within the distribution array for future versions of the schema.

[smrgeoinfo]

+1 on that. I also think that for machine-actionable metadata, the distribution also needs something like the atom 'rel', and the target attributes along the line described in section 5.4 of IETF5988 and ContentModelForLinks (sorry about the docx format!)