SpecDM/SEDDM status

[Markus Demleitner]

Dear Igor,

On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 05:35:57AM -0400, Igor Chilingarian wrote:
> We are preparing a major data release with my team in Moscow. It will
> include a lot of stellar spectra + broadband SEDs. I'm wondering about the
> current status of SED DM / SpecDMv2. The IVOA web-site lists SpecDMv2 as
> "cancelled" and SED DM as "idle". It's strange because SpecDMv2 was at the
> PR stage from what I understand.

It was found in implemenation that the new serialisation didn't have
sufficient advantages over version 1.  On the other hand, it was felt
that if we touch SDM, the result of the effort should be compliant
with all the new cube and company models (which, presumably, would
then let one represent spectra as a special case anyway).

> What standard should we try to be compliant with? What we want is a
> description of FITS serialization -- we need to adjust our web-based
> spectrum visualizer to handle the right fields in the table.

Use SDMv1 for now.  If you notice any major shortcomings, I'm sure
this group will be grateful for your feedback.

        -- Markus