Involvement in Generic Data Set discovery services definition

(CNRS)

François Bonnarel

A mailman distribution list has been created for this Task. The email address is:

WP7_T4_GenericDS@euro-vo.org

while the archive with the mail messages can be found at:

http://www.eso.org/lists/archives/wp7_t4_genericds/

Possible areas of work

• How to handle the discovery of heterogeneous data is under debate (Images, Spectra, Catalogues, etc)
• Several approaches suggested; one of them the development of a super-DAL protocol called Generic Data Set
• Discussion on this approach and/or possible alternatives is needed

WP7 objectives fulfilled

• 1, 2, 3, 7

Possible Internal Deliveries

• Heterogeneous discovery protocol approach proposal/specification

Current status of this Work Package

This package is a generic DAL protocol for all kind of observation data.
It is clear that generic dataset interface has to be defined when the situation is clarified with TAP and SIA/SSA protocols.
TAP discussion is currently making some progress.

Jesus, Doug and François have discussed their view of the SIA2 interface. These discussions include QUERY parameters, access
to cubes, with cutouts and transformations (including resampling) output parameters with their utypes, etc , inclusion of associations and
DAL extensions.

The Generic dataset access protocol will include both common profile to encapsulate the existing IVOA simple access protocols and provide advanced capabilities such as ADQL queries and access modes to heterogeneous
complex data.

Documents to be issued

A version of the SIA2 preliminary draft interface should be ready by end of March. A version of SIA2 working draft is planned to be circulated before next interop meeting in May. The generic dataset protocol could be presented in a new document based on Doug's Tody's "DAL architecture document" circulated in the DAL IVOA WG.

-- MireilleLouys - 13 Mar 2009