Definitive version of the VOTable schema for web services

[Anita M. S. Richards]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Ray Plante wrote:

>> astronomer
>
> I believe it was implicit in the discussion that by "astronomer" we meant the 
> "scripting astronomer", one who has enough scripting ability to use, say, a 
> Python module to access a web service.
>
> cheers,
> Ray
>

That is fine for e.g. the VO expert in a large project or students whose 
project has a major fraction working  on these sorts of data, but it 
excludes the majority of astronomers; whereas most astronomers do use 
VOTables although most are not aware of it.  If the minority are your 
target audience, fine.  Regarding the list of pacjkages from fortran to 
IDL... most astronomers will learn one or two, they will _not_ learn the 
whole lot.  Currently, to make best use of VOs, people need a bit of SQL 
plus _one_ scripting language out of python, perl or IDL, in most cases. 
That is about as much as we can expect.


cheers
a


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Dr. A.M.S. Richards, AstroGrid Astronomer,
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Alan Turing Building, 
University of Manchester, M13 9PL
+44 (0)161 275 4124
and
MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, Jodrell Bank Observatory, 
Cheshire SK11 9DL, U.K. +44 (0)1477 571321 (tel) 571618 (fax)