IVOA Roadmap for 2022B

This outlines the roadmap for development activities by the various IVOA working and interest groups between the Oct 2022 and May 2023 Interops.

Applications WG

Standards and Related

• In coordination with other groups, explore support for newer technologies in IVOA Standards
• Evolution of MOC adding frequency axe to MOC
• Following integration of VO-Standards into science plateform
• Migrate HiPS and SAMP documents to Github
• Clean up applications WG wiki pages.
  • Remove stale links and make sure all information is current

• Support open development in PyVO
  • Continue coordination meetings for maintainers, contributors and anyone interested.
• Maintain votable parsing in Astropy core

Data Access Layer WG

ADQL
- 2.1 - Feature complete - validation being finalised
- 2.2
- Vector extension
- move from BNF to PEG for language specification

ADQL User Defined Functions
- ADQL astrometry library
- GAVO and Vizier implementation of coordinate transformation
- Functions added in pgsphere

TAP
- Allow ROT13 for encoding of ADQL query strings?

SIAP-2.0 -> Data Access Protocol v1
- Expanding to cover spectra and potentially measurement sets and catalogues
- One shot cutouts from SIA2
- Renaming SIA2 to reflect expanded role
- Work continues in new GitHub repo: https://github.com/ivoa-std/DAP
- New WD by May interop

SODA-1.1
- Errata for MOC parameter, rebin/project, pixel cutout
- One shot cutouts from SIA2
- Cross-join of parameters
- Metdata
- Select output by dataproduct_type

DataLink 1.1
- Working draft out
- Needs implementations before RFC

DALI-1.2
- multipolygon still pending
- otherwise ready for PRec+RFC (Q1-2023)

SSAP
- Minor revision to
- make coverage information non mandatory
- Explain SSA utype prefix
- Longer term function is covered by DAP + SODA

ConeSearch -1.1 [in connection with TD IG]
- work will progress to close issues
- a new WD before May 2023 Interop ?

LineTAP
- Intended to replace SLAP
- WD before May 2023 Interop ?

ProvTAP
- Continuing work towards mature WD status

TAPRegExt [in connection with Registry WD]
- WD release in Q2-2023

ObjVisSAP
- PR-1.0 nearly there
- implementations ready

Following Radio IG, TD IG activities for requirements
- refer to the roadmaps of these IGs for details

Data Model WG

MIVOT (model mapping syntax for VOTables)
- Complete the REC step
- Providing a PyVO implementation

MANGO (the missing piece in between MIVOT, PhotDM and MCT)
- REC step

Field of view DM
- having a draft

Observation Proposal DM
- having a draft

CubeDM
- having drafts (including DatasetMetadata) + reference implementations

Transform (3rd lettre of MCT)
- having a draft+ reference implementations

Spectrum DM 2.1
- REC step

Grid and Web Services WG

• SSO - working towards next WD based on tokens and delegation.
• ExecPlanner - working towards first WD, splitting the note into three parts:
  • The core ExedPlanner interface
  • A related UWS interface for executing tasks
  • A basic task description language
• Science Platforms - continue collaboration with Theory IG and KDD. What are the IVOA services to build a SP? Do we need some new standardization? What kind of interoperability are we looking for?
• VO in the cloud
  • Looking at how we can publish data in Parquet format via S3 services.
    • This is turning out to be much harder than expected.
• JSON-ification - small team of interested parties to look at what is easy and what is hard. Is it possible to move from XML to JSON? what is the effort needed?
• VOSpace - new usecases that also involves theory data and simulation archives will provide new requirements.
• CredDel - fundamental in the services orchestration should go for tokens
• New requirement for Resouce description in particular comuting and storage resources

Registry

• Continue support for pyvo and RegTAP compliance
• Continue development of new pyvo Registry search API (released on Sep 26, 2022 for pyvo 1.4)
• Start implementing space-time coverage in registries as described in VODataService -1.2, pending approval of the PRs: DALI 1.2 (for MOC serialization) and RegTAP 1.2 (for the stc_spatial table)
• Investigate better inclusion of authoring data in the Registry resources (especially for tables) in order to improve automatic citation: participate in discussions about DCP’s note “Data Origin in the VO”
• Coordinate with Ops IG to continue ongoing validation and curation efforts among registry maintainers, resource curators, and validator and standards authors
• Investigate registering more documentation and tutorial notebooks. Explore takeup and usefulness
• Discuss whether/how does cloud information belong in the registry and how to register information about multiple locations for finding data e.g., on-prem or on S3...
• Standards being worked on:
  • StandardsRegExt -1.1
    • in progress, started in Nov 2022 from 1.0
    • contributors welcome: https://github.com/ivoa-std/StandardsRegExt
  • DocRegExt (NEW) - https://github.com/ivoa-std/DocRegExt
    • from Note "Educational Resources in the Virtual Observatory"
    • support tutorials in several languages
    • notebooks?
  • VoResource -1.2
    • in progress
    • implement UAT-in-the-VO
    • generalize altIdentifiers => DOIs
  • RegTAP 1.2
    • WD https://ivoa.net/documents/RegTAP/20220519/
    • includes VODataService -1.2’s field for space/time/spectrum coverage
    • interop issue bringing instances up-to-date

Semantics WG

On the REC track, Semantics still has the RFC for Vocabularies 2.1 (on github procedures) open. We will try to gather the missing WG reviews during November and thus hope we can pass the document on to the Exec in December; we do not see much potential for controversy in the new regulations.

We also hope to release a Proposed Recommendation for VOUnits 1.1 before the end of 2022 and aim for RFC in January 2023. Given that the update addresses the difficult question of empty and missing units, that RFC could be more involved.

The UCD list 1.5 should be available for TCG review right after the Interop. We hope that it will be endorsed at the next TCG meeting, or perhaps the one after that.

Once that is done, the cycle for the UCD list 1.6 will begin in earnest. This will, in particular, comprise UCDs useful to annotate columns containing metadata on ambient conditions for observations.

Beyond the Semantics WG's documents, we intend to drive along a new release of VOResource with the main goal of clarifying how the UAT is intended to be used within VOResource. Unless the Registry WG has additional items in this update, we expect this will be another easy update.

Outside of the standards track, we still work on the product-type vocabulary that needs to be ready for Datalink 1.1. We also work on the facility nomenclature and hope to produce a note discussion the intended practices between the IVOA and wikidata before the next Interop.

Finally, we will continue to process VEPs in the context of maintaining the vocabulary repository. By this activity's nature, we cannot predict at this point how much effort will be required for that.

Data Curation Preservation IG

2023:

• DOI : implementation, citation and good practices
• Data Origin in the VO: meta-data required to provide sufficient traceability to end-users in order to improve the understanding of the resultsets and enabling its reuse and its citation.
• Providing FAIR data
• Data preservation, TRUST principles and certification
• Data curation and Data Models

Education IG

2022

• Improving the newcomer's session with regard of feedback. Eventual adaption of the Session to in person or hybrid meetings.
• Moving forward with the Edu note in Registry to make tutorial findable in the registry
• Updating the IVOA webpage in regard of VO publishing topics
• Finding a solution for putting votut-latex currently hosted on SVN at GAVO to ivoa github (Not as trivial as it sounds)

• Presenting VO-publishing at AAS meeting (when in person meetings are possible)
• Organizing one week workshop/hackathon on VO publishing with the goal that participants will have a usable VO service running at the end of the workshop (when in person meetings are possible)

Knowledge Discovery IG

• ML-proofing existing and future science platforms:
  
  • Are existing astronomy science platforms compatible with ML methods?
  • Investigate whether science platforms can access tabular and non-tabular data through VO interfaces.
  • Building libraries of well-established pre-trained models and integrating them in science platforms.
• Collecting resources for the "ready to ML in astronomy" kit
  • Library of datasets: collecting data for standard DM application for testing and benchmarking of KD models ("Iris datasets" for astronomy)
  • Looking at different "astronomy data challenges": can they represent the starting point for the library of astronomical datasets?
  • Collecting and describing methods for standardization/normalization of data used in astronomy, with reference data to test different implementations of the methods

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"

Specific focus:

• 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
• Upcoming themes:
  • Operations in the cloud
  • Authentication as an operational necessity

Radio IG

• • Pushing Radio data extension (inteferometry/visibility and single dish) to Working draft status
  • Update implementation review note
  • work out the Pulsar/FRB radio data in the VO note
  • Continue work on python notebooks for finding and downloading radio data through the VO.

Solar System IG

• Continue development on Observation Facility Codes
• Open Science initiatives are putting pressure on astrophysical observatories to accommodate planetary uses. We will highlight success stories in Interop meetings to encourage progress.

• Continue development on Observation Facility Codes
• Get some prototype panetary reference frames incorporated into the Reference Frames vocabulary
• Ensure convergence of the EPN-TAP dataproduct_type with the Data Product Type vocabulary.
• Support PDS/SBN efforts to exercise EPN-TAP and planetary additions to related protocols by implementing IVOA services on small data sets from several different planetary disciplines.

Theory IG

• Establish register of publicly available simulation datasets, and their current FAIRness
• Review SimDM, including how easy is it to implement it on existing systems
• Investigate the possibility of a TAP service for simulations, incorporating SimDM or otherwise
• Continue collaboration with GWS on Science Platforms and their role in simulation generation and distribution

Time Domain IG

• Monitor and support DM efforts towards representing TimeDomain data with the Cube model.
• Continue working with Radio IG on FRB project.

Standard and Processes

Science Priorities

Terms : https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaSciencePriorities

• Motivate further discussions on Science platforms and the role of the IVOA
• Follow-up on RFE of Spectrum DM
• Advocate for DataLink usage
• First discussions on a High Energy Interest Group
• Representation of the IVOA at different meetings:
  • Discussions on the evolution of the community on Alerts
  • Discussions on scientific analysis usage of HiPS