table.load.cdf?

[Mark Taylor]

Thanks Juande for the response, and everyone else for what I'm taking
as tacit agreement.

I have provisionally added a new table.load.* entry on the 
http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SampMTypes wiki page,
subsuming table.load.fits into it, and with some discussion of
when these should/shouldn't be used.

If anyone has reservations about the approach or the details of
the wording, by all means continue the discussion here.

Mark

On Fri, 14 Jun 2013, Juande Santander Vela wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 

--
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/