Expressing 2- and 3-D coordinates

[Ed Shaya]

There is no sin in rolling one's one for one's own purposes.  The VO 
effort is primarily addressed at the issues involved in archiving data  
permanently and the extraction of that data seamlessly from the 
distributed repositories.  The formalisms involved in this may or may 
not match the needs of individual projects (and vice-versa).  In 
particular the required level of metadata and clarity is very high for 
this purpose.  This may not suit other puposes.  Hopefully, the VO is 
giving everyone new concepts and bits and pieces that they can sew 
together to help form what they need.  It is only necessary that when it 
comes time to send information to the permanent archives that it can be 
transformed into the VO standard forms.  And it is also the case that 
even within archives, VO processes may not be appropriate.  We certainly 
are internally doing things very differently in the ADC.  We just need 
to interface to each other's archives and to authors according to the 
standards.
In other words, projects like VOEvent should not guide the VO.  It 
should be informed by the VO and VO should be informed of it.

Ed

Alasdair Allan wrote:

>
> Rob Seaman wrote:
>
>> My comment is that adopting a complicated solution (as the only 
>> option) to a recurring fundamental problem will drive users away from 
>> the VO.  Many discussions in the VO pit computer scientists against 
>> astronomers.  This one appears to be pitting computer scientists 
>> against each other.
>>
>> The bottom line is that the VOEvent community is rather feisty and is 
>> driven not only by VO concerns but also by requirements external to 
>> the VO.  This could be taken as a description of most users that the 
>> VO is likely to attract in the future.  Fundamental VO standards like 
>> STC should be kept as simple and interoperable as practical if 
>> growing the VO community is a goal.
>
>
> I'll make the prediction that event driven science will be one of the 
> main drivers for adoption of VO technologies outside the core VO 
> fraternity. But to have event driven science you have to convince the 
> people with the big glass that it's worth their while to use the VO 
> standards rather than roll their own. If the VO standards are too 
> complicated, and the effort in adopting them even modestly more than 
> rolling their own, then they won't do it.
>
> People running big projects don't generally much care about 
> interoperability and adopt standards where it makes their life easier, 
> rather than harder. If there are no major publishers, then there won't 
> be any users, and therefore there won't be any event driven science, 
> and a much slower adoption of VO technologies by the astronomical 
> community.
>
> Al.
>