[jmmc-tech-group] SAMP meta-data extensions ?

[Mark Taylor]

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012, Sylvain LAFRASSE wrote:

> >>> The DM WG tries to tackle this sort of problem for things
> >>> like spectral characterisation which actually need to be
> >>> machine-readable in order to drive processing (at least, I believe
> >>> that's the idea), and it's a lot of work.  A couple of the
> >>> proposed items (JNLP URL, maybe homepage URL) listed above do
> >>> fall into that category, they can be used by software.
> >>> But in most cases here the use of the items will be to present
> >>> them to humans to read, so the normalisation of the data isn't
> >>> really doing useful work.
> >> 
> >> Except for meta-data harvesting, indexing and publication !
> > 
> > I think the thing I don't understand is: what actual problems does this
> > solve?  Harvesting, indexing and publishing metadata is not an end
> > in itself, so what useful things does it allow you to do that you
> > couldn't do otherwise?
> 
> For example if you want to present harvested data consistently across all applications, and so on.
> You can't guess the mining of meta-data without standardizing keywords first (especially for non-machine stuff, like authors list, descriptions, ....)

That's certainly true as far as it goes.  But what I'm asking is,
what are the (scientific?) use cases for presenting harvested data
in that way?  From a data consumer's point of view, why is it useful
or important to be able to access the (e.g.) the location of release
notes for a range of different applications in a uniform way?

--
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/