IVOA Roadmap for the 2025A time span

This outlines the roadmap for development activities by the various IVOA Working and Interest Groups between the June 2025 (UMD) and the November 2025 (Goerlitz) Interops.

Working Groups

Applications WG

• HATS Note
  • support finishing and publishing the Note

• VOTable
  • stimulate discussions around issues
  • support work towards REC1.6

• Miscellaneous:
  • Migrate HiPS and SAMP repos to Github
  • Initiate and support cleaning up VOTable related code in astropy
  • Organize telecoms as needed
  • PyVO maintenance and evolution

Data Access Layer WG

Primary

• Conesearch
  • WD-1.1 by Nov. 2025
  • Modernize required UCDs (UCD 1.0-> UCD 1+)
  • RESPONSEFORMAT, MAXREC (referring to DALI)
  • Allow services to reject unknown parameters
• DALI
  • REC-1.2 by Nov. 2025
• ADQL
  • Erratum to remove boolean support from the BNF in ADQL-2.1
  • Discussions about support of MOC
  • WD-2.2 by Nov. 2025 (PEG grammar + some optional->mandatory features + arrays)
• DAP (Data Access Protocol)
  • Proceed with renaming, expansion of supported data product types
  • Miscellaneous changes
  • WD-1.0 by Nov. 2025
• SLAP
  • Import use cases from LineTAP
  • Change from SSLDM to the set of columns proposed in LineTAP
  • WD-2.0 by Nov. 2025

Secondary

• ObjObsSAP
  • Align existing impl. to the last PR
  • Validator (Pierre le Sidaner)
  • RFC by Spring Interop. 2026
• TAP
  • Finalize OpenAPI (along with VOSI)
  • Finalize Persistent upload tables
• Datalink
  • Start WD-1.2
    • Get a solution to provide data across multiple locations
    • Support path parameters in service descriptors
• SODA
  • Return extended metadata
  • Cutouts in pixel coordinates
  • New transformation types

Data Model WG

• • Initiate RFC process.

• • Complete model document working draft
  • Review recent work quantifying usage of individual ObsCore fields (deprecation candidates)
  • Submit document and implementations for community review in preparation for RFC

• • Make branch for v1.2 updates
  • Schedule DM focus meetings to:
    • Review candidate list for 'core' elements and make any change recommendations
    • Discuss relation of ObsCore standard and Extension elements in documentation
  • Integrate core additions to ObsCore proper
  • Radio Extension:

• • Create working draft document
  • Review internally, and move through RFC process
• Spectrum 1.2: Submitted RFEs
  • File Erratum for VOCLASS examples
  • Follow-up on discussion for adding DATE-BEG/END (DATE-OBS) as options for the 'observation start/end time'
• LineTap
  • Stay in the loop of DM portion of this standard update (DAL led)
• Cube 1.0 / HEIG workshop?
  • Work with HEIG to define/implement use case workflow with event data
  • consider working toward workshop to build familiarity of using new tooling to implement various use cases
• Provenance
  • Increasing interest and work in expressing provenance in data products (see e.g. One-Step provenance draft Note)
• VOEvent 2.2
  • Monitor VOEvent activities

Distributed Services Protocols WG

Registry WG

• CURRENT FOCUS
  • Investigate "Serving Simulated Data in VO Services/Collections"
    • cf https://wiki.ivoa.net/internal/IVOA/InterOpNov2024DAL/DAL_at_IRSA_Laity.pdf
    • Open question: reuse SSAP datasources for VODataService ?

• • Participate in "alternative links" in DataLink effort with DAL WG to publish cloud-based data products - cf https://github.com/ivoa-std/DataLink/issues/117. Also investigate with DPS (ex GWS) WG if necessary to have such metadata in the Registry.

• STANDARDS IN PROGRESS

• • • https://github.com/ivoa-std/VODataService
    • Status: WD https://ivoa.net/documents/VODataService/20241113/index.html
    • adding a productTypeServed element child to to DataService
    • working on mechanism to discover simulated data

• • • facilitate searching by product type served
    • finish editing, write RFC

• • • https://github.com/ivoa-std/DocRegExt

• • • finish editing, write RFC

• • • https://github.com/ivoa-std/StandardsRegExt

• • • finish RFC and vote

• CONTINUOUS WORK

• • Curation and Validation: follow-up project board to correct Registry issues introduced at College Park Interop in June 2025 [on hold]
  • On-boarding Effort: Prepare and fund a workshop to discuss and disseminate best practices for registry publishing

Semantics WG

Interest Groups

Data Curation Preservation IG

• Continue efforts on a DOI note

• Investigate standard used in scientific community (eg DCAT). Make the bridge with Open Science
• Promote Bibliographic Interfaces (see https://www.ivoa.net/documents/Notes/BibVO/20240214/index.html)
• Investigate data curation aspects to feed AI: legal aspects, citation, etc.

Education IG

High Energy IG

HEIG Goals:

1. ObsCore continuation - Continue with HEIG Note on Obscore extension for HE data; coordination with DM WG & others to move this to WG level
2. VOEvent - followup/continuation from the side-meeting we had in Malta; form a plan
3. DataModel /Event List/High Energy data formats - pursue next steps

Knowledge Discovery IG

Operations IG

Ongoing activity:

• Monitor VO health:
  • Coordinate "weather reports" (service compliance)
• Address non-compliancy:
  • Identify common/persistent errors
  • Support/encourage service operators to improve service compliance
  • Work with WGs on standards-related issues
• Validation:
  • Ensure validators are available (IvoaValidatorsSummary)
  • Encourage use of validators:
    • on deployed services
    • during standard development
• Communication:
  • Provide forum for discussion of operational issues
  • Host/invite "site reports"
  • Encourage feedback communication between ops services and data providers

• Work with DAL on standards issues:
  • ConeSearch: UCD1+
  • DALI: Sexagesimal markup standards
  • SSA: A couple of Errata suggested
• Push for service metadata improvements:
  • VOUnits, UCDs
• Operations in the cloud
• Security in VO services
  • Encourage TAP validators developers to add checks for sql injection susceptibility
• Authentication as an operational necessity
• User agents used in VO services clients

Radio IG

Solar System IG

EPN-TAP 2.1

• progress in various domains (sort out heliophysics and body-fixed coordinate frames, start small bodies taxonomy)

• Installation tests, mock-up service

• Collect some in planetary science & heliophysics
• start generating more tutorials / education actions

EPN-TAP support in pyvo

Time Domain IG

Committees

Standard and Processes

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