Introductory talks part 2 - What powers the VO? IVOA standards and technical overview.

Anita Richards (AstroGrid) - IVOA standards

When an astronomer wants to find data, they may know the name of the instrument or they may just want anything in a certain region, taken in a certain time range, wavelength etc. Virtual Observatory search mechanisms rely on succinct, accurate data descriptions (metadata), which all use the same vocabulary regardless of the local data centre jargon. That is only the tip of the iceberg, however; VOs also provide standards and tools for extracting metadata, handling data and passing it to packages for display and analysis. The data and tools can come from anywhere but they are all interoperable - that is, they can all exchange data or handling instructions. The International Virtual Observatory Alliance meets twice a year and constantly corresponds electronically to coordinate and develop the necessary standards (in the form of documents and schemata). I will give an overview of the most relevant standards for data description and the protocols for data access (like Simple Image Access or Astronomer's Data Query Language) which will be used to meet the goals of this workshop - to allow astronomers from all over the world to access and understand your data.

Presentation: AMSR IVOA talk

Sébastien Derriere (CDS) - Metadata in the VO (UCDs, units, UTypes)

Data can only be properly interpreted and used when proper metadata are associated. Image pixel values without FITS header (with astrometric metadata, instrument information, epoch...), catalogue values without parameters description (column types, units, ...) are useless.

An important step when publishing data to the VO is to ensure that relevant metadata are provided, allowing wide usage of the corresponding data. Several metadata standards have been and are being developed in the IVOA context to ensure the use of homogeneous metadata across the VO, and allow good interoperability.

This talk will review various useful metadata elements that are used in the VO, their current status, scope and use in the data access protocols, and tools.

Presentation: Metadata in the VO

Kevin Benson (AstroGrid) - Registry

Astronomical data providers make their data available for scientific use through publishing it with a standard set of metadata.The tool which enables this process is called the Registry. The Registry gives client applications a standard set of metadata for observatories or data providers to publish their metadata. The client applications have a standard interface for querying the metadata. Registries also have a standard harvest interface to connect between registries around the world. This talk gives an overview of how the Registry works.

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Pedro Osuna (ESA) - Publishing Data in the VO

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Bruno Rino (ESO) - Sessions Overview

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