RFC initiated for Simple Spectral Access protocol

[Tamas Budavari]

Hi Roy,

To be fair... It's not that our service's format is changing *again*, but
that the specifications changed AGAIN. I am really glad we are converging
on something but I wish we had done this years ago, when we developed the
Spectrum Service; or at least last year, when we had the cycles to make
progress on the subject.

Us changing the service is a good thing. We are changing it, because we
want to be IVOA compliant, and we would like to do it as soon as possible.

Cheers, T.



On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Doug Tody wrote:

> Hi Roy -
> 
> Before doing this you might want to look at the SSA proxy service
> for the JHU spectrum services (http://webtest.aoc.nrao.edu/ivoa-dal).
> While this is an SSA service rather than a cone search, it will take
> POS,SIZE and return a VOTable with pointers to the sloan spectra, so it
> comes very close to what you describe.
> 
> 	- Doug
> 
> 
> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007, Roy Williams wrote:
> 
> >
> > > I'm afraid that I am with Randy on this.  Yes, VOTable is very
> > > convenient for some things, but the danger is that if we emphasise it
> > > too much for spectra, service providers may think that they don't have
> > > to support anything else.
> >
> > What a coincidence to see this thread first thing this morning, since I
> > have planned part of my day for translating the spectrum service from
> > JHU into a proper cone search -- i.e. one that returns VOTable. And I am
> > told by the developers (budavari and Dobos) that their XML format will
> > change *again* in the near future, so that I will have to re-create this
> > filter quite soon. What would be really nice is a spectral cone search
> > -- RA and DEC and SR is converted to VOTable of sources and links to
> > their spectra.
> >
> > Roy
> >
>