IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM36)

Sunday May 16 @ 16.00-18.00

Supplementary: Wednesday May 19 @ 12.30-14.00, possible extension @ 17.00

Logistics

Sunday meeting in the Merino room, Wednesday meeting in the Harbour room. Full Meeting at InterOpMay2010.

Draft Agenda FM36

1. Roll Call and Agenda
2. Minutes of TM35
3. Status of Actions - brief, no discussion
4. Project Reports - Significant Events Only
5. Report of the TCG meeting and TCG status - CA
6. Reports by WGs - WG Chairs
7. Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
8. Discussion on IVOA and Exec (what is IVOA? what is Exec?) - all
9. Discussion on the IVOA structure (Exec, committees, WGs/IGs/LGs, ...) - all
10. IVOA Web pages - AL
11. Interop POC - SG
12. Expiring Chairs - FP
13. Next Interops and Workshops
14. Date of next meeting (TM37)
15. AOB
16. Discussion on Action Items
17. Summary of Actions

Reports from the Projects

ArVO

The Byurakan Observatory electronic plate database has been updated and complemented with new data. Altogether, 35,000 photographic plates and film exposures are present. Works on installation of this database on the BAO and ArVO (ArmCluster) servers are being conducted. It gives full access by various parameters: sky area, observing project, telescope, observing mode, date of observation, observer, etc. The digitization works of the Byurakan archive plates are being continued. The digitized Byurakan plates will make up the main part of the Armenian astronomical data centre. Discussions on possible science projects were held.

The ISTC project (A-1606) on "Development of Armenian-Georgian Grid Infrastructure and applications in the Fields of High Energy Physics, Astrophysics and Quantum Physics" has been continued in collaboration with 6 other Armenian and Georgian institutions, which includes the development of Armenian-Georgian VO based on the plate databases of Byurakan and Abastumani observatories. This will be the first attempt to create a regional VO, as in the future we will need to expand the VO projects regionally to cover larger areas in the world.

A DVD “Astronomy for Students” was produced containing a full collection of necessary information and data for students studying astronomy at the Yerevan State University (YSU). Review papers, presentations and software on Virtual Observatories have been included as well.

AstroGrid

Even more than is already the case, we expect that AstroGrid technical software, working services, and user tools will be seen as a contribution to a unified Euro-VO.

Our proposal to obtain funding to support the creation of the "AstroGrid Software Foundation" did not succeed, but this certainly something we will revisit.

You can obtain AstroGrid user tools at http://www.astrogrid.org and the AstroGrid technical infrastructure software at http://deployer.astrogrid.org

Australia-VO

BRAVO

China-VO

CVO

We have implemented IVOA Single Sign On across all CADC web applications and services. Users with X509 certficates can authenticate using this mechanism if they need to access proprietary data or other restricted resources.

We are currently developing a VOSpace 2.0 service. While this is primarily to support collaboration between survey team members the service will be available for use by all CADC users. In conjunction with the VOSpace development, we are also designing and prototyping a general purpose Group Membership Service (GMS); this specification will be brought forward for discussion in the Grid and Web Services WG. The prototype VOSpace and GMS source code is also available through the OpenCADC project.

CAOM TAP service: http://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/caom/

CAOM SIA service: http://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/sia/

OpenCADC project: http://opencadc.googlecode.com/

Euro-VO

France VO

GAVO

GAVO – the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory – continued and expanded the operation of its data center ( http://dc.zah.uni-heidelberg.de ). Many new services were incorporated, most prominently the new proper motion catalogue PPMXL (a re-reduction of USNO-B). Other services were extended as well, in particular the Millenium interface, to which the Millenium II data and some hydrodynamic simulation data were added.

GAVO continued developing software, in particular the suite to support the data center, parts of which were packaged, an SQLServer extension for indexing 3D spatial data, and a generic framework to generate all kinds of artefacts from UML data model definitions.

The focus of GAVO activities in IVOA have been the simulation data model (including SimDB), TAP, and expressing of STC (and other data models) in VOTables. We reached out towards the German speaking astronomical community with a well-received splinter meeting at the annual meeting (AG Tagung) 2009, plus a GAVO-booth there. Current funding of GAVO (http://www.g-vo.org) is guaranteed until June 2011.

HVO

Japan-VO

Korean VO

RVO

SVO

VObs.it

VO-India

Reports from WGs & IGs(follows order as at http://www.ivoa.net/forum/)

Applications WG

Data Access Layer WG

• TAP V1.0 has finally reached REC status following a lot of hard work by DAL folk worldwide. Special thanks are due to Pat Dowler along with all the authors and contributors to the standard. The DAL session will have talks based upon experience gained implementing TAP.

• TAP/PQL has also moved forward with concrete experience being gained in prototype implementations. These will be further discussed during the Interop with examples shown in the Joint DM/DAL session, especially within the GDS/ObsDM query context.

• Extensions to SSAP to cover Photometery and Filter Profile services are being refined and some modest work on Footprint Services has also been undertaken. These will be discussed in the DAL session.

• SIA V2 is progressing with a Working Draft in production and 2D prototypes being developed. Again, these will be discussed in the DAL session.

• Finally, the SLAP document has entered TCG Review and we hope it is promoted to REC when the review is complete.

More detailed information can be found here

Data Models WG

A first draft for the description of the Observation data model Core Components was published in the focus team in January 2010. First implementations by CADC and ESO produce interesting feedback on the model. Lessons learned to be included in the next version of the draft after discussion in DM session 1 at Victoria Interop meeting.

Photometry:

A prototype data model proposition by ESAC discussed in March at the last Euro-VO AIDA meeting in Heidelberg. Draft currently written.

Characterisation version 2.0:

This new issue of the model is driven by the explicit description of Level 4, the simplification of the XML schema and of the Utype list. New classes include: Coverage Sensitivity maps, Resolution variation as maps or functions descriptions, etc.. Also discussed in this context: Prototype definition of a data linking container for accessing the data set: type of data format, mime-type, access url and access parameters. To be discussed in the context of Observation DM and OBS/TAP service implementations too.

Spectrum DM revision

For a better compatibility with SSA and SDM documents, inconstencies in Utypes and UCDs in the two documents were identified. Doug Tody, Jonathan McDowell are currently updating the documents to produce two new coordinated versions, still backward compatible.

Units:

Stand by due to lack of manpower

MireilleLouys, May 13, 2010

Grid and Web Services Working Group

• The TCG review period for Universal Worker Service (UWS) has ended but we are still awaiting (5/10) approval from a number of chairs, despite repeated coaxing, cajoling and badgering on the TCG list. This seems to be an increasingly common occurrence in the specification process and needs addressing.
• The RFC period for Web Service Basic Profile has ended (4/28) with comments from just one individual which are being addressed. It is difficult to believe that this represents the tacit approval of the rest of the IVOA for this specification. Again we need to engage more comment and review from within IVOA on our specifications and within the specified timescales. A number of specifications have also garnered extensive comment outside of and after the review process - how should this be treated? It seems churlish to ignore it but the process is there for a purpose.
• The RFC period for Support Interfaces (VOSI) has ended (5/14) with comments from two individuals which are being addressed. Again given that this is an integral part of the TAP specification, it is surprising that it has not garnered greater comment or review.
• A new working draft of VOSpace 2.0 has been released (3/23) and reference implementations are being created at CADC, CDS and Caltech.
• There has been some internal discussion about VOPipe.

Registry WG

Semantics/UCD WG

VOEvent

VOQL WG

VOTable WG

Data Curation and Preservation IG

Theory IG

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