Data service types

[martin hill]

Hi all

One thing that didn't seem very clear from the meetings was what DAL was all 
about.  We talked about the technicalities of two particular services: Images 
and Spectra, but the rather larger set including stellar catalogues and other 
databases of information wasn't considered (as if we didn't have enough to 
talk about!).

Are we assuming just now that we are working on three services: images (SIAP 
as cutout and 'as-stored'), spectra (SSA in early stages) and stellar 
catalogues (as SkyNode2, being defined)?  As an Astrogrid datacenter developer 
I need to know who I should be talking to about making sure things are 
compatible! Will & I have already been talking, but if the group feels that 
SkyNode2 will be the *defining* interface for ADQL-querying VO datacenters, 
and NVO Cone Searches for http/get VO datacenters, then we shall happily work 
towards that (and provide input to that!).  If not we need to know!  We have 
now 3 astrogrid datacenters running in various versions, and by Christmas 
expect to have around 6-10 homogenous, so we need to know...! 

Also a suggestion that I think came up somewhere in the meeting, that we make 
the formats of the http/get urls similar.  This (might?) save having to use 
template urls (if that's what was meant by them).  For example, at the moment 
the SIAP uses a comma to separate RA/DEC, whereas NVO cone search specifies 
them explicitly.

Finally (really) I would also like to find out here what services people want 
to publish to the VO and some idea of the structure of that data, so we can 
build an overall picture of what the VO is likely to be serving. 

Cheers,

Martin

-- 
Martin Hill
07901 55 24 66
www.mchill.net