SAMP/PLASTIC and astronomers

[Mark Taylor]

Igor,

On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, Igor Chilingarian wrote:

> Message I would like to transfer to the IVOA Apps IG as a feedback for my 
> talk and the following discussion.

thanks for the dissemination and feedback.  It's very good to have this
stuff advertised to astronomers.

> 1) There is a need in the astronomical community for an *EASY WAY* of 
> interaction between (sophisticated) data visualisation and analysis tools 
> written in different programming languages by different people (i.e. 
> interoperability).
>
> 2) I've made some advertisement, and the audience was quite impressed by the 
> capabilities already provided by PLASTIC and by the forthcoming SAMP. 
> However, astronomers want THEIR TOOLS to work the same way. They also tend to 
> hide under the tables when the hear the word "Java" (although I explained 
> that everything is language independent).

Did you encounter names of particular tools that astronomers would like 
to see interoperating in this way?  The one that I keep coming across 
that people would like to see PLASTICised but is not is DS9.  Once SAMP 
is sufficiently stable (I hope not too long) I will have another go 
at contacting Bill Joye the DS9 author to see if he is amenable to 
adding SAMP support.  We should keep our ears open for other particular 
tools which astronomers want interoperability for, and contact the
relevant developers where appropriate.  This group can offer some 
support and advice to interested authors, and possibly coding 
assistance (e.g. SAMP toolkits) if that is wanted.

I think one general point which may be appropriate to make in some
cases is that application interoperability is not strictly VO business in
the sense that, say, DAL protocols are.  Despite the IVOA provenance,
developers of applications which do not view themselves as virtual 
observatory tools should not feel that this technology is not for them.

Mark

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/