Charter for the VO Applications Interest Group

[Thomas McGlynn]

While I think the basic issue of discussing how
software interacts is central to this group -- I'll
try to think of some words to put in the charter --
words like 'develop standards' that Alberto had in his
first message worry me.

That's more the purview of the working groups, and in practice
it's been very hard to update things that are indicated as standards,
witness VOTable, and even something as simple as the Cone Search.

Should we look at more informal approach, where this group
serves as a place where groups of two or three (or more) organizations
can describe what they are doing to get their tools to work
together?  Others would be free to either use the same
approach, or to suggest enhancements or changes (or make changes
themselves), but there wouldn't be a formal group imprimateur.

It seems to me that this is exactly how the discussion Alberto,
Sonali and Ivo have been having has evolved.  First
they discuss how a current set of tools interacts and then
they begin to hash out a new approach that incorporates the old.
Where this diverges from the working groups is the sense that
we don't expect to wait till everyone is on-board with
a given approach before some of us build tools that use the
new ideas.   If a couple of them agree on what they want
to do, I say they don't need the rest of us to approve --
but I hope they keep describing what they are doing.
This group lets us take a peek at what the new innovations are,
and take advantage of what the innovators learn and build.

This is a bit more bottom up than the approach
in the working groups and may give us a better chance to
get practical experience with building things before we
freeze the interface designs.

My thoughts here are not entirely worked out and so I may be
babbline a bit here... What do others feel about this.

	Tom