[obs-tap]:updates on the Proposed recommendation

Arnold Rots arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
Mon Aug 1 06:53:40 PDT 2011


Francois,

Nothing is going on underground.
I have shared our experiences in implementing ObsTAP with some local
members of the TCG. I made it clear that the PR can be implemented,
but that there are problems.

But if I understand your argument below, we are in full agreement.
You want to separate Data Link from Data Discovery and that is
precisely what I was arguing; my complaint was that there are Data
Link elements in the ObsTAP Data Discovery protocol that are causing a
problem.
Specifically: the access_* elements belong in Data Link, not in Data
Discovery, and with them removed the data types available can be
enumerated in a single record.
So, the example I gave (the responses to a Data Discovery query and a
Data Linking query) are in full agreement with what you are
advocating, as far as I can tell.

Is there still an issue, then?

Cheers,

  - Arnold


Francois Bonnarel wrote:
> Hi Arnold, all dm people,
> 
> Let me go back to this, because apparently, this discussion is going on 
> underground
> 
> First come back to the very beginning of the ObsTap effort...
> It was a strong commitment from the comitee to build something fast
> reusing tAP protocol and observation/charac data model for
> data discovery covering most of the needs...
>  From the very beginning also, it was obvious that Data links
> and virtual access data could not and will not be covered by Obstap
> The DataLink method or service concept has been around in various DAL notes
> since years now. As far as I am concerned I made presentations in the 
> last three
> Interop meetings (Victoria, Nara and Napoli, see eg the latter: 
> http://www.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/DAL-InteropMay2011/DataLink.pdf )
> 
> This concept is there, because you cannot imagine providing both Data 
> Discovery
> and complex linkage features (or linkage for complex data structure) in 
> one step
> and a SINGLE table, (single table required by the TAP-ADQL protocol as 
> all may remember)
> So ObsTap is there for DataDiscovery... the only thing you can imagine 
> to provide access to the
> various Data sets in an observation is to duplicate the observation raws 
> until you reach full
> discovery of all observation-related products as was allready 
> explained... This is verbose
> and works . So now how can DataLink work in the future ? see below on 
> your use case ...
> Data Link is now in the roodmap of the DAL working group and an IVOA 
> note is in preparation as a
> very first drafting effort of this new "protocol".... The note will be 
> available within 3 weeks or so..
> 
> Arnold Rots a e'crit :
> > This is becoming unwieldy.
> > Trying to make X-ray data (and I suspect the same is true for aperture
> > synthesis data) fit into something that is designed with optical
> > images in mind is reminiscent of round pegs and square holes.
> >
> > Service providers are free to define subtypes and titles, but you are
> > saying that if they don't follow rules that are not spelled out,
> > things won't work as envisaged.
> > Also, if I understand the argument correctly, if data discovery
> > software is to be helpful at all, it needs to be able to extract some
> > information from the title field - but that is intended for human
> > consumption.
> >
> > If I see this, it looks like I need to generate at least eight records
> > for a single observation, some containing a mix of levels, and all
> > duplicating pretty much the same metadata.
> >
> > This is not going to make it attractive to provide ObsTAP services.
> >
> >
> > Maybe I should do what you did and provide an example of how I thought
> > it should have worked.
> >
> > Here is how I would envisage data discovery of Chandra data to work:
> >   A single record per Obsid that provides the observational metadata and:
> >     ObsId
> >       12345
> >     Dataset Identifier
> >       ivo://ADS/Sa.CXO#obs/12345
> >     Data Types available
> >       Package
> >       Event list
> >       Image
> >     Calibration level
> >       2
> >     Title
> >       Chandra/ACIS ObsId 12345
> >
> >   
> DataLink is a method or a service allowing to retrieve a table 
> describing links between observations
> identified by their obsid and any kind of data retrieval ... Obsid known 
> from an ObsTap discovery
> phase can be directly used for interrogating such a service of course.. 
> (and by the way in the case the Obstap service is a TAP-PQL service the 
> DataLink table could be attached with the main obstap table in the same 
> query response because the single table requirement is no more there in 
> that case)
> But it is a qualified link which means that the semantic or type of the 
> link is given in one field
> of the table, while the nature of the access is given in another field : 
> this can tell us if it is a simple
> retrieval , an SIA Query service ans SSA AccesData method, etc ...
> So in your use case we will get three different links for the same 
> Observation (obsid) .. the types
> (or semantic) will be Package, event list and image and the Access 
> nature could be respectivly : retrieval
> retrieval and SIA query (for example)
> In addition the "Access" package (group of access fields in the table) 
> is proposed to be extended
> beyond the traditional "reference" and "format" to describe which part 
> of a complex "file" is to be retrieved
> ( path in a directory/tar file, extension in MEF file, table name in a 
> VOTABLE, etc ...) .. A proposal
> for such an extended access package is described in the 
> chaaracterisation 2 draft at the moment...
> 
> Best regards
> Franc,ois
> > Then a data access protocol that allows querying the archive using any
> > of the above in a where clause, with either ObsId or DID required, and
> > returning:
> >   ObsId  DataType   Contents   Level   Format      URL
> >   -----------------------------------------------------------
> >   12345  Pkg_1      evt,img    2       tar         http://...
> >   12345  Pkg_2      evt,img    1       tar         http://...
> >   12345  Pkg_12     evt,img    2,1     tar         http://...
> >   12345  evt        evt        2       fits-bin    http://...
> >   12345  evt        evt        1       fits-bin    http://...
> >   12345  img        img        2       fits        http://...
> >   12345  img        img        2       jpg         http://...
> >   12345  img        img        2       fits        http://...
> >   12345  img        img        2       jpg         http://...
> > This is an example where the client specified ObsId or DID, but no
> > data type or format.
> >
> > Never mind the terms and abbreviations I used - you get the picture.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> >   - Arnold
> >
> >
> > Douglas Tody wrote:
> >   
> >> More precisely what you might have is something like (display in a wide view):
> >>
> >>      ObsId     Type     Subtype               Level     Format                         Title
> >>      ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>      123      event    chandra.hrc.pkg         1      application/x-tar-gzip   Chandra ACS-XYZ observation package (event,refimage)
> >>      123      image    chandra.hrc.refimage    2      image/fits               Chandra ACS-XYZ reference image
> >>      123      image    chandra.hrc.preview     2      image/jpeg               Chandra ACS-XYZ preview image
> >>      345      event    rosat.foo.pkg           1      application/x-tar-gzip   ROSAT whatever observation package (xxx)
> >>
> >> and so forth.  The subtype could in principle be more generic but will
> >> likely be instrument-specific for a level 1 observation.
> >>
> >> The Title should concisely describe the data product, e.g., origin,
> >> instrument, ID, what it is (observation package, calibration, standard
> >> view, etc.).  The title string is what one normally wants to output on a
> >> displayed image or plot to identify to a human the data being shown.
> >> You can put whatever you want in there to describe the data product so
> >> long as it is concise (one line of text).
> >>
> >>          - Doug
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Douglas Tody wrote:
> >>
> >>     
> >>> On Thu, 7 Jul 2011, Arnold Rots wrote:
> >>>
> >>>       
> >>>> Aside from what I reported in a previous message, quoted below, there
> >>>> are more discrepancies between Table 5 and Tables 6 and 7:
> >>>>
> >>>> obs_creator_did is missing from Table 7
> >>>> o_units in Table 5 should be o_unit
> >>>> pol_states is missing from Table 6
> >>>> facility_name and instrument_name are spelled differently;
> >>>>  even though required, they show up in Table 7, rather than 6
> >>>> em_unit is missing from Table 5
> >>>> o_stat_error is missing from Table 7
> >>>>
> >>>> Also, note the comment I made on MJD in use case 1.6
> >>>> and on the uselessness of bib_reference because of its murky
> >>>> definition
> >>>>
> >>>> I still lament the fact that the data access functionality is
> >>>> compromising the self-consistency and usefulness of the data discovery
> >>>> function, but decided for our tarred packages to use:
> >>>>  dataproduct_type = NULL
> >>>>  dataproduct_subtype = package:event,image
> >>>>  access_format = application/x-tar
> >>>> As far as I can tell, this is within the specifications.
> >>>>         
> >>> Well we don't specify what the subtypes you provide for your archive
> >>> should be so I suppose you could get away with this, but this example is
> >>> not at all what we had in mind.  The subtype should be the science type
> >>> of the specific data product, *not* details about the content of the
> >>> data product.  I would expect the type to be "event" (meaning "event
> >>> data" not "event list") and the subtype to be something more like
> >>> "chandra.hrc.package", "chandra.hrc.refimage (or "rosat.XX" etc.).
> >>>
> >>> Note subtypes are supposed to be fixed strings so that one can search
> >>> the local archive for a particular type of data product; if you try to
> >>> describe what is included in a particular data product then such
> >>> selection won't be possible.  So for example a client will do a generic
> >>> query to see what subtypes Chandra defines, and then they can pose a
> >>> more specific query to get a certain type of Chandra-specific data
> >>> product.  Likewise for ALMA etc.
> >>>
> >>> Note you also have obs.title where you can provide a short description
> >>> of the data product and for this you can provide whatever you want.
> >>>
> >>>       - Doug
> >>>
> >>>       
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
> > Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
> > 60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
> > Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
> > USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >   
> 
> 
> -- 
> =====================================================================
> Franc,ois   Bonnarel           Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg
> CDS (Centre de donne'es        11, rue de l'Universite'
> astronomiques de Strasbourg)  F--67000 Strasbourg (France)
> 
> Tel: +33-(0)3 68 85 24 11     WWW: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/people/fb.html
> Fax: +33-(0)3 68 85 24 25     E-mail: francois.bonnarel at astro.unistra.fr
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 67                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head.cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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