TDIG Chair

[John Swinbank]

Hello,

On 11 Jun 2013, at 19:44, Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:

>> (As you might have heard rumoured previously…) following last month's InterOp in Heidelberg, the Exec has asked me to take on the role of Chair of the Time Domain Interest Group, a position which I'm now happy to have accepted. I'm delighted to report that Mike Fitzpatrick has agreed to take on the job of Vice Chair.
> 
> You guys might start by clarifying the remit of TDIG versus VOEvent WG.

The minutes from the Exec meeting where this was decided are: "The new remit would cover what the WG is currently doing. It would provide a point of contact for Time Domain astronomy community (LOFAR, MeerKAT, ASKAP, LSST, ... ). There is demand from data providers for a way to publish to the VO."

Also from reading Exec minutes, I understand that Matthew drafted a TDIG charter and submitted it to the Exec. I don't see a copy of the charter or any conclusions from that process. I'll follow this up with Matthew.

Informally, I think this means the remit of the group extends from simply defining "content and meaning of a standard information packet for representing, transmitting, archiving, and publishing a discovery of an immediate event in the sky" to all aspects of time domain astronomy. Perhaps most notably, that means figuring out how best to work with time series or lightcurve data in a general sense.

>> - Endorsing SimpleTimeSeries as an IVOA-approved format.
>> 
>> I understand that this will involve the production of an appropriate IVOA note. As far as I'm aware, Matthew is taking the lead on this.
> 
> Have you contacted Josh Bloom and John Brewer recently?

I haven't. I'll ping Matthew and ask if he can provide an update on recent activity here.

[…]

>> How can we be sure that a VOEvent is from who it claims to be from? How can we provide events only to authenticated subscribers?
> 
> These are two different issues.  Digital signing was demonstrated in 2005 and Bob implemented another variation.  Pick one.  Authentication on the other hand can be achieved at the transport level and requires the responsible participation of projects wanting to limit access to their events.

Note that Bob's proposal uses the same signing mechanism to achieve both objectives: the first by publishers signing events, the second by subscribers using exactly the same method to sign their transport protocol messages.

This is also an area where some raised LSST eyebrows were spotted in Heidelberg. My hunch is that individually signing 2e6 documents wouldn't be a major burden either in terms of computation or bandwidth, but should check that this really isn't a problem for them.

>> - Future evolution of the VOEvent standard.
>> 
>> We discussed this a little last month, and it's something that I'm sure we'll return to again in the future (perhaps most immediately in person at http://www.hotwireduniverse.org/).
> 
> Let's schedule a session in Santa Fe (perhaps after hours over a Margarita) to discuss all these issues.  I strongly recommend that IVOA, TDIG, and VOEvent prepare in advance to present a coherent united position on all issues during the meeting itself.

Sounds great!

Cheers,

John