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

[Anita M. S. Richards]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Doug Tody wrote:

> Hi Alberto -
>
> Thanks, that helps a bit.  No one (so far as I know) is arguing that
> VOTable is the solution to all problems in VO.  We use it primarily
> for representing and interchanging tables, such as the output of a
> DAL query or the input or output of a TAP/ADQL table query, which
> are classical table-oriented queries.

I agree with Doug, and we have to look beyond our internal VO concerns. 
VOTable is the basis for making a number of tools very powerful and very 
popular, because it is relatively simple and restricted - so easy for even 
the slightly geeky to understand - but also very easily interconvertible 
with other formats.  For example, I would say that at least half (and 
increasing) of all the astronomers I know who ever use tabular data, use 
TopCat or the STILTS library, both to handle data which they have got from 
VO sources and simply to manipulate their own or private data.  Many use 
it without realising, too, every time they get back a list of images. 
There are tools which do very specialised conversions of angular or time 
coordinates to very high accuracy which use VOTable, for example; many of 
the people who have written these tools are not going to want another 
upheaval within a decade, not to mention users.  Astronomers will use both 
specialised research tools and Google-like tools for different purposes. 
We need to be able to interchange formats which can be ingested/output, 
not try and replace the many specialised applications which use VOTable.

cheers
Anita

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Dr. A.M.S. Richards, AstroGrid Astronomer,
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Alan Turing Building, 
University of Manchester, M13 9PL
+44 (0)161 275 4124
and
MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, Jodrell Bank Observatory, 
Cheshire SK11 9DL, U.K. +44 (0)1477 571321 (tel) 571618 (fax)