Spectra DM for theoretical spectra?

[Gerard]

Hi Carlos

> 
> >> The Spectra datamodel is perfect for most of the issues, but the 
> >> characterization in SimDB provides a better description of 
> what the 
> >> theoretical spectra is.
> >> 
> > Dear Miguel,
> >
> > May I ask you what is missing in the SpectrumDM?
> > What is SimDB offering extra, specific to spectra?
> 
> The main point, as I see it, is that the SpectrumDM is 
> designed having observed spectra in mind, no theoretical ones.
> 
> The model contains everything that is necesary to describe 
> the content of a spectrum (the wavelength, flux and all that, 
> and this is the same for observed and theoretical ones) but 
> nothing of what is needed to __characterize__ a theoretical spectrum.
> 
> For instance, a theoretical spectra is usually characterized 
> giving, at
> least:
> 
> - the code used to synthetize it.
> - the effective temperature of the star
> - the gravity (logg) of the star
> - the metallicity of the star
> 
> (and sometimes some other parameters)
> 
> And, in the spectrum data model there is no utype for those 
> properties.
> 
> Making a long history short, if two different developers make 
> two different services with theoretical spectra and one 
> chooses "Meta" for the parameter containing the value for the 
> metallicity and the other chooses "Z" for the same parameter, 
> a client/application does not have a way to know that both 
> refer to the same concept (and UCD's are not enough for
> this)
> 
> By the way, I think that SimDB doesn't solve that problem 
> either, am I right?
> 
That depends on what you expect from SimDB.
That is, SimDB could allow you to define in some detail what code was used
to produce synthetics spectra, though it may need some additions to the
model as discussed in previous emails.
The code is represented by the SimDB:Protocol, which contains input
parameters, physics, algorithms and allows
you to describe what is contained in a result
(SimDB:RepresentationObjectType). The input parameters have a name as well
as a "semantic label", which may be a UCD or something more generic. So if
metallicity is in that vocabulary you can describe this. SimDB allows you to
find all protocols that use a metallicity in their list of input parameters.
The actual experiment that you run to produce your synthetic spectra is
described amongst others by the values you assign to the parameters.

Note that I am not suggesting that there can not be other, possibly more
explicit models for theoretical/synthetic spectra. The SimDB data model is
rather abstract, i.e. not very concrete, as it aims to support many types of
siimulations and simulation codes etc. The SimDB data model could serve as
the basis from which to derive more concrete models, but it may not serve
the purposes of SimDB to do this in SimDB itself.
For example if there is a particular set of parameters that all
codes-producing-synthetic-spectra use, one could create a subclass of
SimDB:Protocol that has these explicitly as attributes.
For example a SyntheticSpectralModel could (I do not say should! It seems
rather specialised and in need of discussion with a larger group of
astrophysicists) have an attribute "metallicity" for example. Such a model
will now give rise to a corresponding UTYPE. Something similar occurs in the
SimDB data model where the SimDB:Snapshot is a special type of result (for
3+1D simulations) and has explicit attributes like spatialSize and time.



> I think that the spectrum data model should contain a section 
> for characterization of theoretical data providing utypes 
> for, at least, a minimum set of parameters associated to 
> theoretical spectra.
> 
One may argue that this is not "characterisation" but "provenance",
something that the spectral data model does not deal with in detail.

> The fact is that SSAP/SpectrumDM was done for observed 
> spectra, it considers a lot of details about them, etc but it 
> included theoretical spectra just as a use case in an appendix.
> 
> If it is going to be mandatory to use the same schema for 
> theoretical spectra and it is expected that we do it (let's 
> say) for ever, a little amount of time should be dedicated to 
> fill the holes in the protocol/data model when it refers to 
> theoretical spectra.
> 
Correct, but I would second Rick in proposing this not be done in the
current effort on SimDB or SimDAP/S3, at least not in their version 1.0.

If you can come up with a more concrete model for synthetic spectra,
possibly derived from SimDB/DM, you can easily create a service spec around
this by mapping the model to a relational representation and using TAP for
access.



Cheers

Gerard