Proposed agenda for DAL session at the May Interop meeting

[Doug Tody]

Dear DAL folks -

The Data Access Layer discussions will be held 08:30 - 12:00 Tuesday and
Wednesday mornings, May 25-26, in Jefferson room 256.  We may also try
to have some smaller impromptu focus meetings during the week to work
out details of the interfaces currently in the definition stage.

What follows is a draft agenda for the DAL sessions with some suggested
topics in each area.  If you would like to suggest a new topic or contribute
in any of these areas please let me know.  Those of you who have actively
worked to develop specific material in the past six months are encouraged
to present the relevant topic.  The time allocations will be determined
later as the agenda is developed.

Any comments or other suggestions are most welcome!

    - Doug


1. SSA, time series
    - Service classes
    - Query interface
    - SSA data model
    - Data representation (VOTable, FITS, XML, text)

    We are still working on the SSA interface and data model documents
    and hope to have these available in advance of the workshop.

2. SIA V1.1
    - General dataset metadata (identification, characterization)
    - Logical dataset identifer proposal (logical groupings)
    - Ranking proposal
    - UCD normalization is discussed separately; see below
    - Anything else?

    SIA V1.1 is a limited scope upgrade to the current interface.  The goal
    is the bring the interface up to current standards and add some modest
    new capabilities.

3. UTYPE and UCD (Joint with UCD WG!)
    - When and how to use UCD, UTYPE
    - UCDs for SIA V1.1

    This topic has received a great deal of discussion over the past year.
    Maybe this time we can nail it down, at least as regards usage in
    SIA V1.1, and SSA, which will follow the same pattern.

4. Roadmap and Future Topics
    - Catalog access (plans for ADQL usage in DAL, updated catalog access)
    - Exanded image access capabilities
    - Interferometry and event data
    - Other

    What is required to support the applications we plan to build over
    the next year?