NOAO Science Archive Domain Model contribution

[Phillip Warner]

Hello again, Data Modelers,

After looking over the email once again, I noticed that I failed to
mention one person who is not part of the NSA team, but provided input
to the modeling effort.  This person is the lead in the Pipeline effort
at NOAO, Frank Valdes.  We also used a document written by Frank, as a
starting point in modeling the "Observation Facilities" package (this is
the same document mentioned in the PDF), which can be found at:
http://iraf.noao.edu/projects/ccdmosaic/Imagedef/classes.html
This may be of interest to you as well.

Thanks again,

Phillip Warner
NSA Team
NOAO






On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 15:15:38 -0700
Phillip Warner <pwarner at noao.edu> wrote:

> Greetings to all in Data Model land,
> 
> I have been on this list for a while now, keeping track of the
> progress that is being made by the Data Model group.  I appreciate all
> the hard work that has gone into defining the current form of the data
> model, as I found that the models are closely related to the model we
> have developed for the NOAO Science Archive (NSA).  I would therefore
> like to contribute a snapshot of our current domain model.
> 
> NOAO has been developing a system that will eventually replace and
> extend the current NSA.  For those that are not familiar with the NSA
> (http://archive.noao.edu/nsa), it is an archive of reduced and highly
> processed ground-based optical and IR data produced by NOAO Survey
> teams (see http://www.noao.edu/gateway/surveys/programs.html for past
> and present surveys).  The NSA, in its current state, holds only
> survey data.  The new development effort, however, is focused on
> creating an archive for raw, calibrated, and reduced data, as well as
> catalogs of astronomical objects and extracted spectral and time
> series data, in the O/IR domain.
> 
> The NSA is an ongoing development project. We are currently working on
> developing the needed infrastructure to archive raw data streams
> coming from NOAO telescopes.  Hence, this domain model is not yet
> complete; some areas are more defined than others.
> 
> The current version attempts to capture elements of an astronomical
> observation, much like the Observation model.  Also, we have
> incorporated, albeit rather superficially, the concept of Quantity
> into our model.  We have also tried to make our model as consistent as
> possible with the current Observation data model, although ultimately
> there is not a direct one-to-one mapping for many elements.  An
> example of this is our use of the term "Observation", which in our
> project's glossary, is regarded as a synonym for "astronomical
> exposure".
> 
> Although much of this domain model is directed to the internal needs
> of the NSA as a data center, we think that many parts apply generally
> to what is needed for the VO model.  Furthermore, we think that this
> model could provide some insight into how the VO could work with each
> individual institution.  Of course, we do plan for interoperability
> with the VO, and therefore we find that providing our modeling to the
> DM group may be helpful.
> 
> I have posted this document on the IVOA wiki, in the DM group web:
> 
>    http://ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaDataModel
> 
> or more specifically,
> 
>    http://ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/IvoaDataModel/NSA-DM-v0.4.0.pdf
> 
> Thanks for reading and please enjoy,
> 
> Phillip Warner
> NSA Team
> NOAO