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

[Patrick Dowler]

On Friday 15 May 2009 11:10:19 Alberto Micol wrote:
> 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).
...
> 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.

It seems rather inconsistent to say that astronomers will build their own 
tools and at the same time these standardised units and formats will not be 
"seen" by the users. 

I agree that users need to be able to write their own task-specific tools - 
that would be great and a sure sign that the VO works! My feeling is this will 
happen when someone does enough of the (hard) work and content is uniform 
enough for users to succeed. I don't think we can mandate that data providers 
do that work, but we can encourage them, make it easy for them, and maybe in 
some cases someone else will do it for them (eg. make a service with the same 
content but with extra computed columns in standard 
frames/systems/units/whatever... value-added web 2.something goodness). 

Or they could all use STIL and Mark will have to do all the hard work.. sounds 
like plan B :-)

Seriously, I think first we need to make the content available in a more 
technically uniform fashion (IVOA service standards). Then we can see about 
more uniform content.

my 2c,



-- 

Patrick Dowler
Tel/Tél: (250) 363-0044
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
National Research Council Canada
5071 West Saanich Road
Victoria, BC V9E 2M7

Centre canadien de donnees astronomiques
Conseil national de recherches Canada
5071, chemin West Saanich
Victoria (C.-B.) V9E 2M7
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