Coupled resource: inconsistency in Encoding Guidelines & examples

[PeterParslow]

The "Encoding Guidelines" for Coupled resource say:

"The srv:operatesOn element shall contain a Unique Resource Identifier, (not to be confused with a W3C URI) through an an xlink:href attribute, pointing to the gmd:MD_DataIdentification element of the metadata record of the provided dataset or dataset series."

But go on to mention that it is implemented as a URL which gives access to the metadata record - and that's what the examples do.

I suspect this arises from the ambiguous wording of the INSPIRE TG (unchanged at least from 2016 to online version at https://github.com/INSPIRE-MIF/technical-guidelines/blob/main/metadata/metadata-iso19139/metadata-iso19139.adoc#linking-to-provided-data-sets-using-coupled-resource), which states that the xlink:href should resolve to the MD_DataIdentification, but gives examples that appear to return the whole record.

Propose correcting the Guidelines to indicate what happens in the examples: that the link is to the whole record.

Note: DGIWG Metadata Profile takes a different approach, requiring a UUID (encoded using uuidref) that is required to match a UUID used as the XML identifier of the MD_DataIdentification & recommending that that is the same as the GEMINI fileIdentifier of that record.

[nmtoken]

Note the TG is quoting the INSPIRE legislation on term Unique Resource Identifier as opposed W3C URI which is a Uniform Resource Identifier

[PeterParslow]

But even then we go on to suggest that a URL to the actual record should be used, whether or not that involves a Resource identifier (GEMINI File identifier). In the case of a CSW request URL it probably does; in the case of WAF retrieval URL, it probably doesn't.