Apps Messaging - Semantics of a Message

[Jonathan Tedds]

Quick input from the sidelines if I may. As an astronomer pushing VO 
potential and VO enabled clients to fellow astronomers in the UK and the 
wider EuroVO community we seem to be reaching a bit of a tipping point of
interest and potential use. This is based on workshops and general 
interest at UK and EuroVO events in the last 2-3 years I have been 
involved with. The single thing such users are currently most impressed 
with seems to be the ability to discover, access and pass multi 
mission data between established and new VO enabled data analysis tools 
via plastic. People see this as the obvious first step on the road to 
wider VO use in astronomy whie recognising it is a first step (from their 
point of view).

I therefore propose that we have to be as pragmatic as possible at 
this point if we are to successfully persuade astronomers to become 
involved with using the VO. Yes I don't doubt that there will be 
limitations for some messaging uses but astronomers are more than used to 
the many more limitations in accessing and interoperating between 
multiple archive datasets at present. They will accept, I think, that 
having an initial protocol such as plastic that works now (within limits 
of course) in many cases is better than waiting for a wider protocol down 
the line. I am not persuaded from the arguments to date that the one 
cannot be incorporated into a more general approach as needed in 
time?

Cheers,
Jonathan

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Dr Jonathan Tedds,                          Tel: +44 (0)116 252 3502
XMM-Newton Survey Science, AstroGrid &
European Virtual Observatory Data Centre Alliance,
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Leicester,                    Email: jat at star.le.ac.uk
Leicester LE1 7RH, UK           http://xmmssc-www.star.le.ac.uk/~jat
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