Standardising units and formats (and ref frames?) in transmission

[Alberto Micol]

Douglas Tody wrote (see http://www.ivoa.net/forum/dal/0905/1266.htm):
> On Fri, 15 May 2009, Alberto Micol wrote:
>> In the end Users shall be able to write their own tools!
>> And in whatever language they want.
>>
>> This is the real uptake I'm interested in. User-built tools will be 
>> the real demonstration that the IVOA has done the right thing.
>
> I very much agree with this[...]

Standardising (unifying) units and formats will help a lot in that respect.
And I'm glad you agreed on that too. Today others also agreed (though 
privately).

I really hope to hear more (public) voices on this (old) idea of 
standardising units and formats
--if not even reference frames-- for the most common and relevant things 
that travels onto the wire
(not what is presented to the Users).

That approach is less error prone (try parsing various types of 
ucds/utypes/names/ids),
it makes client software more robust and performant, it simplifies the 
life of those astronomers
that would want to write their own VO-based tools, and it makes the VO 
immediately
"computer-ready" (e.g. if all angles are in radians --as per Francois' 
old idea-- the computer
simply applies a cosine to it without having to scale; scaling is only 
useful --and due--
on the frontend).

And nothing prevents our standards from carrying over also the original 
data in their original
formats and units, if so required.

The approach here proposed (again) is just a transport mechanism, an 
infrastractural standard,
nothing for humans to see, to interpret, or to be affectively attached to.

Raise your voice, yes I'm talking to you, you that are always struggling 
with those IVOA standards. Otherwise, well... you'll get what you deserve!

> In designing our
> science oriented protocols (DAL for example), we need to balance
> two key use cases: direct use of the protocols by the end user
> astronomer/programmer/scripter, and use internally for interoperability
> within the big projects, e.g., for portal applications or data center
> software.  Both are important and are needed, and we really do not
> want to split the VO down the middle and separate these two as some
> might suggest.
>   It is possible to support both use cases, but takes
> some care.  Much of the controversy within VO circles is due to this
> conflict, with some wanting to give only the final super-duper portal
> applications to users, and others (myself for one) trying to address
> both use cases.
>
> This is an age old issue affecting essentially all astronomy
> science software which astronomers use directly for their research.
> Ultimately if a research environment is successful much of the
> applications functionality will have to come from the user community.
>
>     - Doug
Thanks Doug, I fully agree.

Alberto
--
My beloved son's voice over the phone matters to me infinitely more than 
the format of the internet packets that carried it to me.