UCD problem in SSA/SpectrumDM

[Petr Skoda]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2009, Douglas Tody wrote:

>> Does to this level 3 belong the addition of some explanatory comments and 
>> some "best practise" recommendations  ?  And what about adding whole 
>> example -
>
> I think we need to keep the changes to a minimum for a micro-update.
> Adding extensive new text is probably out of scope.  Otherwise we will
> likely require a more extensive review.

After reading the Bruno's 8-pages I do NOT feel it's just a MINOR 
correction !

I see here the principal problem of the whole VO --- and probably Bruno 
was the first who tried to express his opinions loudly enough on the 
practical examples. I am afraid we are building the Tower of Babel and now 
we are just near the moment of the language confusion;-)

Now I have been in Bulgaria where they have strong urge to publish the 
spectraa from their 2m telescope and scanned plate archives. And they are 
completely confused about the VO activities - no one explained them how 
the system really works despite the VO-focused conferences they have had 
and despite the participation of their people on some IVOA schools --- 
they are still confused. Reading the documentation (SDM and SSA as well as 
SIAP) dd not help them to implement something.

OTOH they have made and  have been making an immense work-- scanning 
hunderds of thousands glass plates - extremely large port of the 
astronomical world potential of astronomical knowledge and VO in 
particular...

But they simply do not understand the goals and structure of the 
protocols. They do not see examples understandable to them (its not about 
SSA or SIAP but IVOA activities in general.

So what is wrong ?

Are they so dumb ? Or are we just speeking in differnet language than 
other "babel tower workers" ?

the SSA is often given as an example of the working standard.
But have someone really tried to prepare the service according to what is 
written ? Or is it just "obvious" what was meant by some statement in the 
SSA and SDM ?

I am afraid that there seems to be simple the problem ot two cultures - 
the astronomers I know and I am working with are speeaking different 
language that the majority of VO project scientists...

> I agree that having more user documentation would be very helpful
> for something as complex as SSA, however perhaps at some point this
> should go into a FAQ or something (a user guide is also a possibility),
> instead of the spec itself.

I suppose the statements in the standard should crystal-clear without the 
ambiguities .... So what sense has the postponing the explanations to FAQ?

>
> Yes, reference implementations illustrating these capabilities and
> the query response are very helpful to understanding a complex spec.
> We have made a good start at this, however:

let's do it fully !

>
> Ideally we should have some reference/test services and a FAQ or
> user guide, in additional to the spec itself.  This could help the
> implementors quite a lot! (also our ready to use service frameworks,
> which are coming online slowly).

Absolutely - many people start to understand the advantage of VO approach
only after some  examples of how they could benefit from the VO tools and 
services.... They need examples from their field --- otherwise they do not 
bother.


> we could register SSA services properly in the registry.  Once the
> micro-update is done to update the spec, it would be a good time to
> register the test/demo services.

I feel the time for registration should come before the RFC for new 
revison - its difficult to check something works without having 
opportunity to play with this .....

*************************************************************************
*  Petr Skoda                         Phone : +420-323-649201, ext. 361 *
*  Stellar Department                         +420-323-620361           *
*  Astronomical Institute AS CR       Fax   : +420-323-620250           *
*  251 65 Ondrejov                    e-mail: skoda at sunstel.asu.cas.cz  *
*  Czech Republic                                                       *
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