State of Play for exec meeting

[Ray Plante]

Hi Tony,

I'm sorry for the delay on this.  (It's been nuts this month.)

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Tony Linde wrote:
> 1. Have you created one or more Registry components?
> 2. Do they comply with RM/Schema recommendations?
> 3. Do they allow themselves to be harvested? Has this happened? From what
> other projects?
> 4. Have you successfully harvested from other registries? Which ones? With
> what measure of success?

State of the NVO Registry Prototype

NVO has implemented prototypes of both publishing and full searchable 
registries.  A publishing registry at NCSA allows data providers to 
register their resources via a web form.  The records created are then 
harvestable via the OAI interface.  Providers can return anytime to update 
or delete their records or add new ones.  Alternatively, data providers 
may download the registry software and run it locally on their own 
machines.  We know of no other sites running this software in production 
mode, though a few have downloaded it for testing purposes.  Seven sites 
have registered via the NCSA installation.  A second publishing registry 
has been implemented and installed at HEASARC: it serves descriptions of 
hundreds of its catalogs via the OAI interface.  A third publishing 
registry was installed briefly at Caltech; however, it is currently being 
upgraded.  The NVO has one full searchable registry at STScI/JHU that has 
harvested records from the NVO publishing registries as well as those from 
AstroGrid and CDS.  (The AstroGrid registry has also received records 
from the NVO registry.)  The STScI/JHU is also capable of publishing new 
records as well.  This searchable registry is now support the NVO Data 
Inventory Service.  All NVO registries have been upgraded to use the 
latest official versions of the VOResource metadata schemas.  

We have successfully demonstrated harvesting; however, there are still 
remaining a number of minor differences between interfaces, both in the 
use of the VOResource schemas and the OAI wrapper.  Plante has 
documented these items on the registry list.  Further work is needed to 
establish an automated use of the harvesting interface that includes:
   *  minor adjustments to the VORegistry metadata 
   *  agreement on VO use of the OAI interface (e.g. name for the 
         VOResource metadata format).
   *  protocol for a publishing registry to alert harvester(s) of their 
         existance.
   *  protocol for timely reharvesting (e.g. either regular polling from 
         harvester or alert signals to harvester from harvestee).

hope this helps,
Ray