VOEvent v2.0, some thoughts

[Roy Williams]

Rob
Excellent summary of our future duties! A few comments below.
Roy

>     1) XML signatures

This has been requested many times. Events can be signed and 
applications that consume events can verify chain of trust. I hope that 
backward compatibility will be assured with unsigned events.

>     2) support for IVO vocabularies (for <Why> and <What>)

How can I say "supernova Ia" using one of the vocabularies? Do I have to 
import a schema? What would the <Why> section look like?

In the <What> section, we are having trouble with those parameters which 
are links to further information. We are mashing up VOEvent feeds for 
Google Sky (voeventnet.org), and each placemark on the sky may have 
links to finding chart, event portfolio, photometry file, etc, which 
should be linked from that placemark. But each event stream uses 
different types of Params or References for these.
>     3) extension schemata (<What>)
Is it possible to make this so that a missing schema does not derail the 
parsing? This kind of extra structure is better accepted by a community 
if it is voluntary .....

>     4) time series via SDM (<What>)
I think this can be done, if we all agree to use the same time scale -- 
otherwise it will be difficult to control which time standards are 
allowed, and parser will become difficult. Suggest Barycentric Modified 
Julian Day for this.

>     5) orbital elements via STC (<WhereWhen>)
Excellent

> V2.0 will remain independent of transport, but we should also discuss 
> the status of the transport document. 
We have found the RSS feed to be reliable and useful, they are at 
voeventnet.org, suitable for machine consumption. Of course, RSS is not 
suitable if messages must arrive faster than a few minutes.

Roy

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