call for presentations at the Data Model sessions in Cambridge , September 2007

[Doug Tody]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Alberto Conti wrote:

> You mention that WWT will speak VOTAble natively, understand SIAPs,
> ConeSearches, etc... this is really great. My problem (and it's a personal
> opinion) is that VOTable as is, as a transport mechanism is not adequate. But
> my opinion, as many know, is irrelevant!

I don't understand what your point is here Alberto.  Can you expand
upon this?  I am sure that KML is much better for some things than
is VOTable, but VOTable works very well as a standard data model and
transport mechanism for tabular data, a very common case in astronomy,
and certainly a good fit for the output of a database query (which
is what most VO data queries are).

Of course if we look at any one problem a custom designed solution
might be a better fit, but there are major advantages to making use
of a standard abstraction for which we can invest in sophisticated
implementations, build up a collection of standard tools, etc.
To take this anti-VOTable argument to an extreme, if we are to do
away with standard mechanisms for table abstractions, perhaps we
should do away with the relational database while we are at it.
It is much the same situation.

	- Doug