table.load.cdf?

[Juande Santander Vela]

I think you've touched most of the points: fragmentation vs. immediate usefulness for a new community, and insist in that VOTable should be the preferred format. If not, I can imagine at least HDF5 coming... or would it be served by the CDF one?

So my vote is for going forward with the actions you suggest as best solution.

El 14/06/2013, a las 11:02, Mark Taylor <m.b.taylor at bristol.ac.uk> escribió:

> Hallo SAMPers.
> 
> There has been the suggestion to introduce a new MType table.load.cdf,
> for exchanging tables in CDF format (http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/).
> This format is widely used for solar and space physics data as well 
> as elsewhere.  It is typically, but not necessarily, used for
> time series data.
> 
> It's clear what this MType would look like, namely the same as the
> existing table.load.votable and table.load.fits MTypes currently
> documented on the SampMTypes wiki page 
> (http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SampMTypes).
> It is in experimental use in a test version of CDPP/AMDA, as
> described here:
> 
>   http://cdpp1.cesr.fr/downloads/tutorials/import_CDF_in_AMDA_via_SAMP.pdf
> 
> On the one hand this is perfectly reasonable, but on the other hand
> introducing many different table.load.* MTypes risks fragmenting
> the community of SAMP applications.
> 
> At present the large majority of tools that exchange tables via SAMP
> do it in the form of VOTables.  This means that SAMP table 
> producer/consumer applications do not need to support a large 
> range of data formats, since everybody sends and receives a single 
> format, VOTable (although the MType table.load.fits exists, I don't 
> think it's widely used in practice - does anybody know different?)
> 
> So one option would be to encourage the CDF users to convert their
> tables to/from VOTable format for exchange via SAMP.
> However this may not be appropriate for a community which is already
> standardised on some other format and who may not be much interested
> in most of the existing VOTable-friendly SAMP-aware tools.
> Additionally, some differences between the data models imposed
> by VOTable and CDF may mean that such transformation is problematic
> (causing data or metadata to get lost or mangled).  In any case
> there is no way to force people to use particular MTypes,
> SAMP is intentionally open to people creating and using whatever
> MTypes suit their purposes.
> 
> I think the best solution would be to adjust the existing text
> on the SampMTypes wiki page, indicating that the table.load.votable
> MType is the one generally recommended for interoperability, 
> but that other format variants (table.load.fits, table.load.cdf, 
> maybe new ones if there is a demand) are permitted for special
> purposes where required.  It should be made clear that general 
> purpose tools are not expected to implement them all.
> 
> If this suggestion is greeted on-list by the customary silence,
> I will go ahead and adjust the text on the wiki page accordingly.
> But if anyone has opinions on it, please speak up.
> 
> Mark
> 
> --
> 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/

--
Juande Santander Vela
VIA-SKA Project Manager
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)
Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, E-18008, Granada, Spain

Bertrand Russell: Aún cuando todos los expertos coincidan, muy bien podrían estar equivocados.