RFC initiated for Simple Spectral Access protocol

[Doug Tody]

The Simple Spectral Access (SSA) protocol document is now an IVOA
Proposed Recommendation.  A 1-month Request For Comments period
has been initiated, with the goal of advancing SSA to an IVOA
Recommendation.

Note that although early SSA implementations include a getCapabilities
operation for returning service metadata, specification of this
operation has proven more time-consuming than hoped due to multiple
working groups being involved, and has been deferred to SSA V1.1, which
is expected to follow in several months time.  The V1.0 specification
being reviewed here mentions getCapabilities (and getAvailability)
but does not specify the contents of the metadata to be returned.
As per agreements reached in Beijing, the older FORMAT=METADATA
construct is specified instead. This will eventually be deprecated,
but allows SSA V1.0 to go forward immediately while we continue work
to specify these additional operations for V1.1.

A 1-month Request For Comments period on the draft SSA V1.0
specification has therefore been initiated.  Please review the
specification, and add any comments to the RFC page at

    http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/SsaRFC

More extensive discussions should be directed to the DAL working
group mailing list (dal at ivoa.net).  The most recent version of the
SSA specification can be found at

    http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/SSA.html

Please submit any comments by 2 July 2007.  Thanks in advance for
your contributions.

Doug Tody
Out-going Chair, IVOA Data Access Layer Working Group