IVOA Roadmap for 2017A
This outlines the roadmap for development activities by the various IVOA working and interest groups in 2017 between the Shanghai and Santiago Interops.
Registry Interfaces 1.1, which in particular lets
RegTAP operators register their services as registries (registration as TAP services with
RegTAP data in them, of course, can continue). That, however, builds on the Discovering Dependent Resources note, so that would probably have to be endorsed before RI 1.1 can actually become REC.
VOResource 1.1: Should go to RFC in the next few weeks. We are still soliciting takeup of the new features. To make this more attractive, the
RofR will investigate installing the new schema so registries already using new features do not become invalid.
RegTAP 1.1: This puts new VOResource 1.1 features into
RegTAP. We have first implementations of a proposed extension of the schema. A working draft should be published July-ish.
Discovering Dependent Resources: This is a proposed endorsed note trying to solve the problem of properly discovering data collections that are published through other services, the prime use case so far being TAP tables. The central concept here are auxiliary capabilities, essentially saying "this data can be accessed via TAP/SIAP/whatever in a services with the following access URL". There is some takeup of the proposed scheme, and TOPCAT already supports discovery through it. To make it a valid replacement for current workarounds (i.e.,
GloTS), more takeup is necessary; various registry operators have pledged to work towards it.
Standards records: We will continue to work with the chairs of the other IVOA working groups to ensure that they register their standards as envisioned by
StandardsRegExt (cf.
WriteAStandardsRecord).
TAPRegExt 1.1 will be kept in lockstep with TAP 1.1.
Maintenance: We will keep making sure the registry system runs; in particular, the anomalies diagnosed by the ESA registry have been diagnosed and, where there is a potential for later functionality problems, will be addressed in the coming months.
We intent to build a task force that identifies key activities / challenges to focus on
In addition important knowledge discovery uses cases should be identified and collected to be reported at the next interop meeting. If possible, prototype implementations of services should be developed and presented that cover some of the discussed topics at the Shanghai interop.
Work in the "Implemementation Note" for
SimDAL.
We intend to describe several implementations, done by different groups, about different types of simulations.
It is expected to have the note finished by Spring, 2018.
Follow-up of the Document Standards V2.0: real-life adjustment of the standardisation, endorsed notes and errata processes.