any application using datalink?

[Mark Taylor]

On Mon, 13 Mar 2017, Carlos Rodrigo wrote:

> Hi
> 
> is anybody aware of any VO application that is able to handle datalink content?
> 
> I mean, if the application receives a votable with a resource pointing to a datalink service, it
> tells the user "there are more links related to this result" and then, at least, offers the user to
> visualize the list of available links
> 
> of something like that.
> 
> is there any application able to do something similar? or planning to do it in a near future?

Speaking for topcat: there is no datalink functionality right now.
However, it's been looming over my to-do list for a while, and
I agreed recently in the context of the upcoming Gaia DR2 (next year)
that I will provide some kind of datalink awareness in topcat
in the forseeable future.

I don't yet have a clear idea what this would look like.  I'm not
sure it makes sense for a general table-handling application like
topcat to act as a fully featured datalink client with the
capability of allowing users to construct queries for non-table
data according to a datalink-specified parameter list.
Displaying a list of available (static) links as you suggest
sounds more like what I'd imagine.

But if people have requirements/ideas/advice in this area
I'd be happy to discuss it (maybe at the ASTERICS meeting next week).

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/