IVOA - GGF Astro-RG Work Shop

@ GGF17 May 2006, Tokyo, Japan

Workshop Title

Building a Global Virtual Observatory for Astronomy - Grid Standards and their Relevance in Use

Proposed workshop organizer names and affiliations

• Nicholas A Walton, IoA, Univ of Cambridge, UK (Co-Chair Astro-RG)
• Chenzhou Cui, National Astronomical Observatory, China
• Neil Geddes, NGS, RAL, UK
• Thilo Kielmann, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, NL (Co-Chair APPS-RG)
• Reagan Moore, SDSC, San Diego, USA (Co-Chair PE-RG)
• Steven Newhouse, OMII, Southampton, UK (Co-Chair GESA-WG)
• Mastoshi Ohishi, NAOJ, Tokyo, Japan (Chair IVOA)
• Fabio Pasian, INAF-SI, Trieste, Italy (EGEE/NA4)
• Guy Rixon, IoA, Univ of Cambridge, UK (Chair IVOA Grid-Web Services WG)
• David Wallom, Center for E-Research Bristol, UK (Co-Chair PGS-RG)
• Roy Williams, CACR, Caltech, USA (Chair IVOA Techinical Coordination Group)

Sponsoring Groups:

• Astronomy Applications Astro-RG conf
• Database Access and Integration Services WG DAIS-WG pend
• Simple API for Grid Applications SAGA-RG pend
• Preservation Environments PE-RG conf
• Workflow Management Research Group WFM-RG pend
• Production Grid Services Research Group PGS-RG pend

Scope and Content

This workshop, jointly sponsored by the GGF and the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA - see http://www.ivoa.net). The meeting is timely in that the global Virtual Observatory (VO) projects are now deploying systems worldwide for operational and scientific use, where use of emerging GGF standards in or instance data management and security may have a vital role to play. Interoperability with existing grid infrastructures (e.g. TeraGrid, EGEE) is also a key topic, since VO centers or users must be allowed to take advantage of the power offered by computational grids. This meeting preceeds the next major IVOA interoperability workshop to be held in Victoria, Canada (15-19 May 2006).

The programme would address issues of common interest to the GGF and the IVOA focusing on how a Global Virtual Observatory is being constructed using domain developed high level interoperability standards, but utilising lower level grid and grid service standards and concepts where relevant.

The workshop will provide an opportunity for those involved in creating the interoperabilty standards required by the global Vrtual Observatory community to interact with those creating generic grid standards. The feedback from the exemplar science domain will highlight the opportunities and difficulties presented by take up of GGF standard compliant implementations.

Programme

We envisage that the meeting would be a 'Type two (refereed workshop)' - with a call for papers.

The programme would address in 8 ~one hour sessions, the following areas:

• 1) Requirements for a Virtual Observatory: the Domain Perspective
  • Science drivers for a Virtual Observatory (Walton)
  • Capturing user needs from a middleware perspective (Newhouse)
• 2) VO Case Studies
  • Example VO implementations, UK, USA, Japan, etc
  • Experience with existing grid infrastructures
• 3) Registries and Resource Discovery
• 4) Data Management
  • including preservation of data and knowledge
• 5) Application Environments
• 6) Astronomical Workflows
• 7) Security
  • authroisation and authentication
• 8) The Production Virtual Observatory
  • logging and debugging
  • training and support
  • account management
  • software licensing

Each session would include a period for open discussion

Duration of workshop

One full day - to be held in Tokyo at GGF17 (May 2006). The venue could be either the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, or at the GGF.

Publication Plans

The meeting would be published as a GGF informational document.