VOEvent priorities

[Rob Seaman]

On Feb 3, 2010, at 8:11 PM, Andrew Drake wrote:

> Your comment above seemed clear, "astronomers often include time series in their "telegrams"".

That also includes people on this group.  LSST is only one of the upcoming projects that - in effect - will be taking movies of the sky.  Those movies will often be expressed as simple time series of some object or another.

> Based on Roy's limited results I would think that this is not often the case. Rather, even
> though it is possible to include time series in ATels, it is uncommon.

There are many kinds of telegrams: http://bit.ly/a7tpoL

> We certainly want to go beyond other types of telegrams, but I'm not sure that including time series should be a higher priority than establishing a general way to include, or at least referencing the other kinds of tabulated data.

I thought Matthew split the baby very efficiently.  I don't see why supporting references to external tables means we can't also include internal time series.  Apples and oranges.

I'm heartened by the capacity of this group to undertake robust discussions.  I'm concerned that we are risking not bringing this to a timely close.  We should not regard "forget the whole thing and use something else entirely" as a successful result.

Rob