vocabulary update: proposal for dataproduct_type update for high energy data : event-list definition and event-bundle

[Markus Demleitner]

Dear Mireille,

Thanks for your VEP.

On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 06:16:36PM +0200, Mireille Louys via semantics wrote:
> • Proposedefinitionsforaproduct-type *event-bundle:* An event-bundledataset
> is a complex object containing an event-list and multiple files or
> other substructures that are products necessary to analyse the event-list.
> Data in an event-bundle may thus be used to produce higher leveldata
> products such as images or spectra.

I think the definition is reasonably clear and applicable in
practice.  Before merging this, however, I'd have a few requests for
clarification:

(1) used-in: I really, *really* would like to see actual, published
data here (always, in all VEPs; it's a pain if we go into all the
trouble of defining a concept and then nobody's ever using it in
practice).  I see that CSC on http://cda.cfa.harvard.edu/csctap (or
http://cda.cfa.harvard.edu/csc21tap [1]) has an obscore table.  It
would really be excellent if they could mark up their event bundles
with the new term, such that we could say:

  used-in: dataset ivo://csc.harvard.edu/scsr2?some-obs-id on http://cda.cfa.harvard.edu/csctap

That would help me maintain a clear consciousness when setting up the
new term[2].

(2) Relationship: That's an operational field, i.e., I need to create
an RDF triple from this.  The question thus is: is #event-list wider
than #event-bundle or is it the other way round?  I could conjure up
arguments for both, so, as usual, I'd approach the question from the
user side: If I'm looking for #event-bundle, do I want to see
#event-list, too?  If I'm looking for #event-list, do I want to see
#event-bundle, too?  Whatever ought to encompass the other is the
wider term.

(3) Rationale: If the answer to both of the two questions in the
preceding paragraph is "Yes", then it turns out the concepts are
identical (A ⊂ B and B ⊂ A implies A = B), and hence you really don't
want a new concept but augement #event-list to be something like,
say, "Event list, possibly augmented with ancillary information".
This points to an issue with your rationale: It basically argues that
there's something you would like to say.

An aphorism I'm bringing up rather often these days is: "In protocol
design, don't think about what you want to say.  Think about what
others want to listen to."  Hence, it's be really great if the
rationale said why someone would want to look for #event-bundle
*rather than* #event-list (or for #event-list rather than
#event-bundle, if the the former is the narrower term).  Could you
provide that information in the Rationale section?

Thanks,

             Markus


[1] Regrettably, the CSC TAP services seem to be mildly broken at the
moment.  Coming in with http, they issue https redirects which
confuse TOPCAT; CXC folks: if you really need the forced redirects
(see
<https://blog.tfiu.de/foced-https-redirects-considered-harmful.html> for
a better alternative) then please update your registry records to
point to the https URIs.  Even with https, however, I'm getting a
"cscrel2.dbo.obscore not found" error from TOPCAT when running

  select top 30 * from ivoa.obscore where dataproduct_type='event-list'

It would be great if you could fix that (and a regular run of stilts
taplint is good practice anyway)

[2] You see,
<https://ivoa.net/documents/Vocabularies/20230206/REC-Vocabularies-2.1.html#tth_sEcC.2>,
while not exactly normative, is clear on:

  In particular, ensure [...] resources mentioned in Used-in can be
  reached and reflect the proposed term [...]