Simulation Data Model Documentation

[Bourgès Laurent]

Dear IVOA theory members,

First, I am happy that this mailing list is active with many contributions
recently.
Besides, the simulation data model changed a lot thanks to Gerard and
other contributors in a good way I think.

Since last InterOp (end of september), the public documents about SNAP DM
& protocol did not change at all,
so I tried to use them & implement the SNAP DM for french simulations
(galmer, horizon halo & galaxy catalogs, PDR...) and this work is still
going on.

I want now to insist on one main point : SNAP documentation & change logs.

Gerard changed SNAP pages to provide a new UML model, updated XML schemas
and a new online documentation appeared : great !

However, does it imply that the previous reference document
(SNAP_SimulationDM.doc) will not be updated anymore ?

My concrete problem is to find differences between previous and current
versions of the SNAP DM.

I purpose to use UML for what it is efficient = modelling.

I mean the reference document for SNAP DM should be the UML model (edited
with the community edition of Magic Draw UML)
and provided as a single xml file : SNAP Simulation DM.xml.

I think that xml schemas & online documentation should be generated from
this xml document mainly by XSLT transformations
or any other solution (maybe, ask help to DAL group) because it would be
more accurate & easy to maintain.

For now, the problem is that the UML project does not contain following
information :
- short & long description of every entity (SNAPProtocol, SNAPExperiment ...)
- cardinality of attributes & relations : optional or required attributes
& collections should be defined
- UML model & xml schemas are not synchronized
- xml schemas do not contain some classes (for example :
SNAPPostProcessing hiearachy), but have detailled descriptions for
entities & attributes

So it is difficult to get descriptions and details of SNAP entities &
attributes,
because the information is spread out in UML document & xml schemas.

Besides, it is hard to maintain manually those documents I think,
that's why I purpose to use the UML model as the 'Reference' document with
as much information as possible.

Finally, a change log is needed to provide details on DM evolutions as
Gerard begun to do it.
Maybe, it could be generated too by a difference analysis tool...

Laurent

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 Laurent Bourgès, engineer
 EURO-VO-DCA Project
 LUTh, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon
 5 place Jules Janssen
 F-92 195 Meudon Cedex
 Email: Laurent.Bourges at obspm.fr
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