[Fwd: VOTimeSeries]

[Doug Tody]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007, Roy Williams wrote:

> QUESTION: What semantic information is MISSING from this time series?
> QUESTION: Is there TOO MUCH metadata here, is it too COMPLEX?
> QUESTION: What other syntax could be used besides VOTable?

The use of Topcat to display the data is a good demonstration
of why we prefer to use a standard container such as VOTable for
dataset serialization, rather than something else such as a direct XML
serialization.  In addition to making use of standard tools possible, the
use of a generic container makes it easy to include collection-specific
extensions.

Since SSA is what is used here for the time series data, a client
could also view the data in alternative formats such as CSV, FITS,
or a graphical rendition, depending upon what the service supports.
In particular having a CSV option (or some variant such as TSV) would be
one way to simplify things if the VOTable seems too complex.  Since the
data model is defined independently of the serialization, there is no
need to pick a single serialization.

 	- Doug