An STC "when" and "where" example

[Josh Bloom]


> Just because the majority of the VO was written in Java doesn't mean 
> the whole world uses Java. VOEvent is designed to go outside the 
> carefully crafted VO infrastructure. People who have never heard of the 
> VO might be interested, for the first time, in some of the stuff we're 
> doing here. The buy-in for VOEvent has to be small, minimal.

When deciding how tiny a valid VOEvent is allowed to be, I think we need
to be reminded about who will use the messaging system and, perhaps more
important, who will get worthwhile science out of the system. Yes,
Joe-I've-Got-A-10cm-Scope-In-My-Yard will be interested in followup, and
could harvest targets off a web-based front end at a VOEvent
server....but I doubt he will have much to contribute to warrant such a
simplistic XML message (these messages are not suppose to be parsed by
humans right?!). So focusing on the later population, I would argue that
it will be the projects that have in-house software developers that will
contribute and benefit most from VOEvents. LIGO-II, LDSS, ICE-CUBE,
RAPTOR, Palomar 48inch. VOEvents will be so value-added to these
projects, both in letting them publish discoveries on the cheap and
quick and in providing a fertile ground for follow-up possibilities,
that they should be willing to devote the time to write the glue to the
messaging backbone: The litmus test should be where these such projects
could devote ~< 2 coder-weeks to writing an elegant hook into their
system. We all could provide a simple backend client API in whatever
language we want and they can do the dirty work turning/convert their
own internal transient language into VOEvent-speak.

Josh