Web Cone Searches

[Martin Hill]

On Tuesday 30 September 2003 4:18 pm, Guy Rixon wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Martin Hill wrote:
> > Hmmm, I would have thought that the decision on whether to use a cone
> > search or an ADQL search (assuming the query is simple enough to use
> > either) would be made at the workflow stage, probably based on
> > performance.
> >
> > Again, I think that if you want to do more than the simple cone search,
> > you use an ADQL service, rather than get everyone to extend the cone
> > search - is that what you meant?
> >
> > What advantages do we get from "Cone Search 2: The Web Search" over the
> > CGI one?  I would have thought the CGI one is easier for most people to
> > implement and simple to call.  If a client wants to go to the effort of
> > using web services, they could use the full ADQL one?  Or do people think
> > it would be useful to offer a service call that auto-generated the ADQL
> > for a conesearch, for a simple interface?
>
> Advantage 1: client gets to work in epoch and equinox of choice, not in the
> default epoch and equinox of the cone-search standard (where we came in...)

Then you use the ADQL case... (where I came in!)

> Advantage 2: given good tooling, it's _easier_ to build a client for a web
> service than for a CGI.

Assuming you start from scratch (ie, no tooling let alone good tooling) which 
is easier, CGI or web?  Has anyone done both from scratch (ie no previous 
knowledge?). 

If you're installing tooling anyway then a few extra installations (eg 
Astrogrid's datacenter services, or presumably SkyNode libraries) give 
you all the ADQL stuff 'for free'.  

We might say that cone searches are much simpler to implement at the back 
end, even if you get a load of ADQL-handling stuff for free, but as soon as 
the service provider has to start doing more than 'trivial' RA/DEC searches, 
and include proper motion stuff, then presumably they might as well do the 
full ADQL integration?

Perhaps we need to try a few cases to see what the workload is like.  Any 
volunteers?! I thought so...

-- 
Martin Hill
Astrogrid/AVO, ROE
Tel: 07901 55 24 66