The Issue

While investigating an issue with astropy.io.votable, I noticed that the wrong version of the VOUnits standard was being referenced in the discussion. Looking into it I found that the VOUnits reference in the VOTable standard Reference section was not pointing to the correct version of the standard. The VOUnits reference ( http://www.ivoa.net/documents/latest/VOUnits.html ) lands on an old PR for VOUnits instead of the more recent REC version.

I also noticed that the VOTable standard Reference section uses two difference forms of shortcut URL:

URL Form 1: https://ivoa.net/documents/latest/[std].html - Meant to point to the latest REC of the standard?

URL Form 2: https://ivoa.net/documents/[std] - Meant to point to the latest REC unless changes are in progress, in which case it would point to the most recent PR or WD?

Questions

  • Are the above interpretations of form 1 and form 2 correct (i.e. form 1 is latest REC and form 2 is latest REC, WD or PR)?

  • Are these shortcuts officially supported and/or reliable?
    • See table for results of trying both URL forms on all standards.
    • Form 1 seems much less reliable, making me wonder whether it's intended to be supported
    • If we fix form 1 links, do we need to fix all of them?

  • How should standards documents be referencing other standards docs?
    • Is there a convention for this?
    • Should it vary depending on the use of the remote standard?
    • Examples:
      • Shortcut URLs like forms 1 and 2 above to get to some notion of "latest"
      • Direct URL to specific doc version
        • ivoa.net link or DOI link?

Trying the URLs

The table below shows the results of trying these two forms of document URL shortcuts for each standard. The results are very inconsistent for form 1 ( documents/latest/[std].html), but more solid for form 2 ( documents/[std]).

Table
GroupTitleMost stableIn progressURL Form 1 (documents/latest/[std].html)URL1 ResultURL Form 2 (documents/[std]) URL2 Result
App SAMP - Simple Application Messaging Protocol 1.3 URL latest REC, but redirects to documents/SAMP/ URL latest REC
VOTable - VOTable Format Definition 1.4 URL REC for 1.3, not 1.4 URL latest REC
MOC - HEALPix Multi-Order Coverage Map 1.1 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
HiPS - Hierarchical Progressive Survey 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
DAL DALI - Data Access Layer Interface 1.1 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
DataLink 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
Simple Cone Search 1.03 1.1 URL latest REC URL directory listing with only 20200828 which has latest WD 1.1
SIA - Simple Image Access 2.0 URL REC for 1.0, not 2.0 URL latest REC
SLAP - Simple Line Access 1.0 2.0 URL latest REC URL latest WD
SSA - Simple Spectral Access 1.1 URL latest REC URL latest REC
STC-S: Space-Time Coordinate Metadata Linear String Implementation 1.0 URL Confusing: Points to a note from 2007. Doc page points to a WD from 2013. URL latest WD
TAP - Table Access Protocol 1.1 URL WD 1.0 from 2009 instead of REC 1.1 from 2019 URL latest REC
TAPRegExt - A VOResource Schema Extension for Describing TAP Services 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD (not listed on documents page)
ADQL) and its string representation, ADQL/s.">ADQL - Astronomical Data Query Language 2.00 2.1 URL latest REC URL latest PR
SimDAL - Simulation Data Access Layer 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
VOEvent Transport Protocol 2.00 URL Note 1.0 from 2009 instead of REC 2.0 from 2017 URL latest REC
SODA - Server-side Operations for Data Access 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
Object Visibility Simple Access Protocol 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
EPN-TAP: Publishing Solar System Data to the Virtual Observatory 2.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
DaM PHOTDM - Photometry Data Model 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
SimDM - Simulation Data Model 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
STC) metadata for the Virtual Observatory.">STC - Space-Time Coordinate Metadata for the Virtual Observatory 1.33 URL latest REC URL directory listing with only 1.33 which contains the latest REC
Data Model for Astronomical DataSet Characterisation 1.13 URL latest REC URL REC 1.12 from 2007 instead of latest REC 1.13 from 2008
SSLDM - Simple Spectral Lines Data Model 1.0 RFC URL 404 Not Found URL latest PR
SpectralDM - IVOA Spectral Data Model 1.1 URL 404 Not Found URL latest PR but project cancelled in 2015
ObsCore - Observation Data Model Core Components and its Implementation in the Table Access Protocol 1.1 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
VODML - A Consistent Modeling Language for IVOA Data Models 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
DatasetDM - Dataset Metadata Model 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
CubeDM - N-Dimensional Cube/Image Model 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
ProvenanceDM - Provenance Data Model 1.0 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC (still shown as In Progress on doc page)
Astronomical Coordinates and Coordinate Systems RFC URL 404 Not Found URL latest PR
WCS Transform Model 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
Meas - Astronomical Measurements Model RFC URL 404 Not Found URL latest PR
Observation Locator Table Access Protocol RFC URL 404 Not Found URL latest PR
GWS PDL - Parameter Description Language 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
SSO - Single-Sign-On Profile: Authentication Mechanisms 2.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
VOSpace service specification 2.1 URL WD 2.1 from 2014 instead of REC 2.1 from 2018 URL latest REC
Credential Delegation Protocol 1.0 URL PR 1.01 from 2008 instead of REC 1.0 from 2010 URL latest REC
UWS - Universal Worker Service 1.1 URL PR 1.0 from 2010 instead of REC 1.1 from 2016 URL latest REC
VOSI - IVOA Support Interfaces 1.1 URL REC 1.0 from 2011 instead of REC 1.1 from 2017 URL latest REC
GMS - Group Membership Service 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
ReR IVOA Identifiers 2.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
IVOA Registry Interfaces 1.1 URL PR 1.0 from 2009 instead of REC 1.1 from 2018 URL latest REC
RM - Resource Metadata for the Virtual Observatory 1.12 URL latest REC URL latest REC
StandardsRegExt: a VOResource Schema Extension for Describing IVOA Standards 1.0 URL latest REC URL latest REC
SimpleDALRegExt - Describing Simple Data Access Services 1.1 1.2 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD
VOResource - an XML Encoding Schema for Resource Metadata 1.1 URL REC 1.03 from 2008 instead of REC 1.1 from 2018 URL latest REC
VODataService - A VOResource Schema Extension for Describing Collections and Services 1.1 1.2 URL PR 1.1 from 2010 instead of REC 1.1 from 2010 URL latest PR
RegTAP - Registry Relational Schema 1.1 URL 404 Not Found URL latest REC
Semantics VOUnits - Units in the VO 1.0 URL PR 1.0 from 2012 instead of REC 1.0 from 2014 URL latest REC
UCD - An IVOA standard for Unified Content Descriptors 1.10 URL latest REC URL 404 Not Found
UCD1+ Controlled Vocabulary
version <= 1.3: recommendation
Version >= 1.4: endorsed note
1.3 1.4 URL 404 Not Found (not sure what this one should point to anyway) URL latest proposed endorsed note
Maintenance of the list of UCD words 1.20 RFC URL latest REC URL latest PR
Vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory 1.19 2.00 URL latest REC URL latest WD
SDP DocStd - IVOA Document Standards 2.0 URL PR 1.10 from 2008 instead of REC 2.0 from 2017 URL latest REC
VOE OpenSkyNode, part of the OpenSkyQuery Portal">VOEvent - Sky Event Reporting Metadata (VOEvent) 2.0 URL latest REC, but redirects to documents/VOEvent/ which in future may point to next PR? URL latest REC
VOEventRegExt - An XML Encoding Schema for Resource Metatdata for Collections of Events 1.0 URL 404 Not Found URL latest WD


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Topic revision: r6 - 2020-12-07 - TomDonaldson
 
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