path to CAOM standardisation

[Patrick Dowler]

Hello DMers,

At the recent Sydney Interop we discussed the path for CAOM to become an
IVOA standard. It became clear from Mark's talk about the DM landscape that
there is overlap between various DM efforts and CAOM would contribute to
that... with the resulting complexity/confusion for users/consumers of the
WG outputs.

At the same time, there are efforts to extend ObsCore (radio: advanced,
time series: in progress, high energy: starting) and I heard at least a few
people question whether the "ObsCore" and "extension" concepts made sense
or were in fact conflicting concepts. There's clearly some ambiguity there
that needs to be cleared up.

Also, there is an immediate effort in the SKA Regional Center Network
(SRCNet) collaboration to build the initial v0.1 prototype network and that
includes observation metadata.

I have consulted with new and current CAOM stakeholders and we have
collectively agreed on the following path forward:

1. modify the current CAOM (2.4) model to align better with other IVOA
models
2. modify CAOM to better support radio metadata (CADC and SRCNet use cases)
3. clear alignment so that ObsCore is a "data model view" of CAOM
4. deliver prototype implementations asap4. deliver WD-CAOM-2.5 by approx
Sept (2024)

The current operational data centers (CADC, ESAC, MAST, IPAC) accept that
#1 above will create a level of incompatibility and therefore require a
larger amount of work to adapt from the current version (2.4), which has
been stable and operational for 5 years. We are willing to make that
additional effort in order for CAOM to be a better fit in the IVOA. If
successful, I can say with a high level of certainty that a "CAOM
Relational Mapping" for TAP could follow shortly after as a separate
standard.

With respect to items 1 and 3 above, there is considerable overlap with
current active work in the DM WG and we are willing and able to engage with
those other efforts as soon as possible.

--
Patrick Dowler
Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
Victoria, BC, Canada
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