Pune meeting

[Patricio F. Ortiz]

Hi Sebastien,


On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Sebastien Derriere wrote:
>   I was in fact finishing up a new version of the repository of CDS
> resources, relying on the latest versions of the Schemas
> (VOResource-v0.10).
>   I have added many metadata in the output, and also there are several
> differences in the protocol, so I put this at a temporary different
> address (so that you harvesters don't crash your system because of
> receiving a shomehow unexpected result).
>
>   The root address to access this new description is:
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/registry/vizier/oai_test.pl
>   This is a temporary address only: when people have tested it,
> it will be moved to replace the old incomplete repository:
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/registry/vizier/oai.pl
>
>   This is an OAI implementation, so it supports the different PMH
> verbs. For an example, you can try:
> http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/registry/vizier/oai_test.pl?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=ivo_vor&identifier=ivo%3A%2F%2FCDS%2FVizieR%2FJ%2FApJ%2F481%2F95%2Ftable1
>
>   List of changes include:
>
> - metadataPrefix changed from ivo_vr to ivo_vor
> - identifiers changed (start with ivo:// and ':' replaced by '/'). e.g.:
>    oai:CDS/VizieR:J/ApJ/481/95/table2 becomes
> ivo://CDS/VizieR/J/ApJ/481/95/table2

I kind of liked the previous approach, in table names which do not contain
slashes the separator if perfectly visible, but in the case of vizier, it
gets lost among 6 slashes!

> - name of the elements have changed to follow VOResource-v0.10 and
>   other schemas. Now you will find new/improved resource description of:
> 	o curation/creator (people/organization who created the table)
> 	o curation/contributor (people who helped making the table available)
> 	o curation/date (when the table description was finalized)
> 	o content/subject (split in individual subjects)

	Is the subject inherited from the keywords?

> 	o content/description (paragraph extracted from ReadMe)

This is quite good, particularly when users are "fishing" for data

> 	o content/referenceURL (link to ReadMe)
Excellent!

> 	o interface(s) (each table can be accessed as a WebBrowser or
> ParamHTTP)
> 	o facility (when available)
> 	o coverage/spectral
> 	o full table column description
>
>   I send in attachment to this message the old and new metadata for
> one VizieR table.
>
>   Let me know if you have comments/suggestions to improve this new
> version!
>
> Sebastien

A couple of extra things. I may be missing a point here, but your shortname
seems a bit too short in the case of your example table (J/ApJ/481/95/tab),
yet it is correct for other catalogues (eg VII/188/table1) Is this a
limitation on the number of characters accepted in shortname? If so, what
is the envisioned use of shortname if it can not be unique. In your
example, table2 and table3 have the same shortname.

Another point is the usage of double quotes in the units of RA and Dec when
quoted in h:m:s, d:m:s. I would think that we should get rid of the quotes
in the units.

And talking about wish lists, should we try to incorporate the knowledge of
wether a quantity is measured linearly or logarithmically at this level of
registry and not having to deduced it by guessing its range or a
hint in the column description or a guesstimate based on column name?
It is when one tries to combine quantities when these pieces of metadata
come particularly handy!

Great work!

Cheers,

Patricio


---
Patricio F. Ortiz			pfo at star.le.ac.uk
Department of Physics & Astronomy	Phone: +44 (0)116 252 2015
University of Leicester
Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK