[webservices] connection between origin and magnitude

[Chad Trabant]

On May 24, 2012, at 10:20 AM, Philip Crotwell wrote:

> Hi
> 
> My understanding is that magnitudes are connected to origins (at least
> in the iris database). But from the returned xml, there is no obvious
> connection except maybe by the ordering of the elements.
> 
> Looking at the quakeml documentation, it looks like a magnitude can
> have an "originID" element. Could that be populated, when known, so
> that the magnitude to origin connection is explicit?

Hi Philip,

Yes there is an originID associated with a magnitude in our system.  We will plan on adding this to a future release.

One wrinkle with this is that our notion of a preferred magnitude is event-oriented and not limited to a given origin.  The reason is that a particular origin identified as the preferred may not have what many folks would consider the preferred magnitude associated with it.  The example is a ISC origin where the ISC Mb magnitude is associated, many folks would prefer the Mw or variants.  What this means is that when selecting only preferred origins and magnitudes the results may include a magnitude that identifies and origins that is not included in the results.  Adding the origin associated with a magnitude will just make this more obvious, maybe that's a good thing.

Chad