S3/SimDB

[Miguel Cerviño]

Hello,

First of all, thanks for the mails :) it looks that the list is alive...

Here there are my five cents:

- Regarding SimDB, I must admit that I need to look at it in more  
detail: I had been aware of SNAP, but I lost the change from SNAP to  
SimDB/SimDAP and the first notice I had about the possible use of  
SimDB on "microsimulations" was in Trieste interop. Any case, I think  
that it is interesting to discuss the possible uses here, in the  
mailing list. [Gerard has send some mails about SimDB, SNAP etc,  
however not too much response has been in the list, and most of the  
discussion has been done (mainly) in the Interop meetings, where not  
everybody interested are able to attend, so, reading the mails in the  
list, it is very difficult to know what's going on...]

- I am still worried about simplicity: Lot of astronomers produce  
model that would include in the VO (in fact, they put their models in  
WWW pages), but they have no  knowledge on XML etc... so they just  
look for the most simple solution (they want a simple solution,  
otherwise they will not put their models in a VO way). I think that it  
is needed to offer this kind of flexible solution, apart of other  
solutions more detailed. Ej. In observations, a Cone Search, or a Name  
Search, although simple, are very useful and powerful. Of course,  
other types of searsch are interesting, and the development of ADQL is  
needed, (but also, it does not means that all queries must be done
ONLY with ADQL, neither than ConeSearch or Name Search must disappear).
In this aspect, I am not sue that it is needed that S3 and SimDB  
converge :)

Cheers

	Miguel