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<p>Dear Colleagues,<br>
<br>
Thank you Markus and Mark for your contributions and discussions
on client identification and SoftID. In fact, this is a topic I
suggested and included in the 2025B roadmap of the Operations
group for this semester, based on the discussions we had during
the last IVOA interoperability meeting, and which I wanted to
start working on now. My intention was to remind the community
about the existing note on User-Agent and server usage, and to see
whether any updates to the note might be needed, so thank you
again for moving it forward.<br>
<br>
Regarding your idea of starting to use 'IVOA-science' or something
similar in the User-Agent, I think it’s a very good approach for
exactly the reasons you both mentioned. From my perspective as a
data provider, in our case it can help improve statistics and
better distinguish VO usage from other traffic, making it easier
to identify VO clients. On whether to use 'science' or 'client', I
don’t have a strong opinion. Another suggestion could be something
like 'IVOA-datainquiry', although honestly, I’m still not fully
convinced either way.<br>
<br>
I would also mention that a few weeks ago I updated the
information on the SoftID web page
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SoftID">https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SoftID</a>). So I would
like to use this discussion to encourage clients and data
providers to update the page with the "User-Agent" and/or "Server"
header information they are currently using.<br>
<br>
Finally, I want to emphasize that the Operations group is fully
available to provide any support or assistance needed on this
topic. Please let us know if there is any way we can help, and I
would also like to encourage you to extend this discussion to the
Ops mailing list.<br>
<br>
Best regards and thanks,<br>
<br>
Tamara Civera<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">El 8/1/26 a las 18:08, Markus
Demleitner via apps escribió:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:w6qwwgrdzaky26hmjcdh324kdumy67m4r6oyp4ih3hroy2l6pb@vzegvrrjxrwe">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Dear Colleagues,
On Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 04:10:30PM +0000, Mark Taylor wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">I've implemented it in prototype from the client side for topcat
and stilts:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/releases/topcat/pre/topcat-full_softid.jar__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sc_zzpvoRnjsF2neqG9Q0jVTg7QvSDfYwcya5y9EGYtVXezuDXjgZxXesZpEGkWqOMLXiDj10HU$">https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.star.bristol.ac.uk/mbt/releases/topcat/pre/topcat-full_softid.jar__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sc_zzpvoRnjsF2neqG9Q0jVTg7QvSDfYwcya5y9EGYtVXezuDXjgZxXesZpEGkWqOMLXiDj10HU$</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Thanks a lot! And also thanks for your comment
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/ivoa/softid/pull/1*pullrequestreview-3631477934__;Iw!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sc_zzpvoRnjsF2neqG9Q0jVTg7QvSDfYwcya5y9EGYtVXezuDXjgZxXesZpEGkWqOMLX5UiV65A$"><https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/ivoa/softid/pull/1*pullrequestreview-3631477934__;Iw!!D9dNQwwGXtA!Sc_zzpvoRnjsF2neqG9Q0jVTg7QvSDfYwcya5y9EGYtVXezuDXjgZxXesZpEGkWqOMLX5UiV65A$ ></a>,
in particular this part:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">[Soft-id says:]
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">+The access was done to directly support a science case. This explicitly
+includes education and training, in particular because we do not want to
+suggest that software used in such settings -- which plausibly is going
+to be the same as software used in pure research -- should be
+reconfigured for them.
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
And Mark says:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">I'm not sure about "to directly support a science case"; I'd
suggest something a bit more woolly like "in support of science
usage" or "in the context of science usage". I think the main
target here is to differentiate clients that understand the
VO/astronomy services they are engaging with from those that are
just hitting anything they can find. From a practical point of
view, at least for clients like topcat and stilts, it's not likely
to be feasible to get them to present different user-agent headers
on the basis of the user intention for particular requests, only on
the basis of the tools in use.
Given that I'm wondering if there's a different term than "science"
that should be used here, but I don't have great suggestions.
IVOA-voclient or just IVOA-client maybe?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Well... I'm not a fan of "client" at all because validators are
clients, too. But on re-reading my original text, I don't like the
part about "support a science case. And then there's these other
purposes, too, and anyway clients shouldn't need to guess whether
something is a dry run or the real thing." If it's not (only)
distilled rocket science, we shouldn't use a term that might be
understood in this way.
I think what I want to convey is: "This is VO software intended for
the end user (rather than infrastructure)" (and I think I'd like to
fix the explanation to better express that, too).
So, perhaps VO-user is less grandiose? But then "user" is one of
these words like "resource" that has come to mean far too many
things. Soooo... If some nice word more nearly expressing this
"end-user query" concept just crossed your mind: By all means speak
up.
Thanks,
Markus
</pre>
</blockquote>
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Tamara Civera Lorenzo<br>
<span class="cargo">Scientific Database Engineer / IVOA Ops
vice-chair</span>
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