UCD in the registry

[Anita Richards]

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Roy Williams wrote:

> I am also interested in being able to store UCD information in the VO
> registry, as a way to select interesting resources. If the entity in the
> registry is a table of astronomical data, it would be good to put in UCD
> information. However, if the entity being described is not a table -- a
> project or organization, or a crossmatch service for example --  it is
> difficult to know what to put in the UCD section of the VOResource form.
>
> The VOResource form is for information common to anything that might be in
> the registry -- title, creator, date, description, etc etc. But there should
> be specialized forms to describe other things.
>
> When I fill in my taxes, there is a single form that everyone fills in, and
> a collection of optional forms (income from farming, gambling winnings, etc
....

That is one approach that the AstroGrid Registry group is discussing -
whether to have separate schemas for different sorts of resource (within
reason - the tax return is a good analogy, you want a single-figure No of
options for humans to use!).  In this way the whole section on Coverage
and other things only relevant to data sets would be separate.  THis seems
consistent with your diagram at
http://www.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/IVOARegWp03/VODescription.jpg
- if I was a data provider I would not fill in the Service elements etc.

> Therefore there is no need for <UcdList><Ucd> .....etc. Right?

Um, why not?  It would be in the appropriate schema - but it seems to me
it is needed somewhere, it is a registry entry which will be searched
automatically on a par with coverageSpatial or subject, etc.

By the way, sorry if I have missed something, but what is the "VOResource
form" - is this something for human data / service providers to fill in?
I ahve been starting to design something starting with a simple email text
to see what level of complexity the average punter will respond to (as
distinct from places with lots of paid archivists or VO employees!) but I
would be delighted to find it has already been done...

Finally, the table of links at
http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IVOARegWp03 is very useful but I
am not sure if everything points to the latest versions.  It is a much
better idea than just announcing new releases in the mailing list
(important though that is as well) as it is easier to go to one web page
for links than to search through hundreds of messages in the mail archive.
I know this is a nightmare for the AstroGrid wiki (and I am probably the
worst offender), but maybe at some point we could have a synchronisation
across all the IVOA Registry wiki pages?

thanks
a

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dr. Anita M. S. Richards, AVO Astronomer
MERLIN/VLBI National Facility, University of Manchester,
Jodrell Bank Observatory, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 9DL, U.K.
tel +44 (0)1477 572683 (direct); 571321 (switchboard); 571618 (fax).