Application Session Abstracts

Carlos Rodrigo Blanco: VOSA, The VO SED Analyzer

VOSA (VO Sed Analyzer) is a web application developed using VO resources to fit observational data with theoretical models to infer physical properties for the observed objects.

It resolves objects using the VO, retrieves photometry from VO catalogues, allows the user to upload his/her own photometry too, uses theoretical stellar models from the VO to fit the observed data and find values for the effective temperature, gravity and metallicity, and then uses theoretical isochrones and evolutionary tracks from VO servers to estimate values for the mass and age of the objects.

Thomas Boch: SAMP in Aladin

The Aladin sky atlas is now compatible with the SAMP messaging protocol. After briefly summarizing the developments needed to implement SAMP, I will show an IDL client interacting with Aladin through SAMP.

Thomas Boch: The CDS Portal

The CDS Portal fulfills the double role of a uniform access point to CDS services and of a gateway between the different services. After a detailed presentation of the architecture and the toolkit we rely upon, I will demonstrate a first prototype of the portal. Finally, I will talk about future developments and links with VO standards and resources.

Fabien Chereau: New features in Stellarium/VIRGO

VirGO is a plug-in for the open source software Stellarium adding capabilities for browsing professional astronomical data. This presentation will focus on the improvements coming with the 1.4 release: improved graphical user interface, improved SIA/SSA parser, dynamic display of the DSS sky background and support for high resolution previews.

*Tom Donalson: HST Footprints via VOTABLE in Aladin *

The ability to browse observation footprints is especially useful during observation planning, but the display of the footprints is typically done in a separate user interface from the planning. Using Aladin, APT and a Hubble Legacy Archive footprint server, we will demonstrate how integrating the display of observation footprints and images into the planning tool assists in the planning of a new observation. The HLA footprint server uses the SIA/STC/VOTABLE protocol for describing the footprints and associated images.

Gretchen Greene: A VOTable interface to the registry

VOTable is a standard exchange data model used throughout the IVOA for DAL service protocols. We have adapted this standard as a simplified view of the VOResource registry schema for building client application interfaces. While the latest version of the Registry Interface standard does not support VOTable, we are currently working with IVOA RWG in proposing this option. This talk will present some new features implemented for the NVO Registry programmtic interfaces using VOTables. We will also address technical issues we discovered in the process of building applications with reliance on registry service discovery.

Thomas McGlynn: JavaScript/XSLT processing of VOTables

Modern browsers have a built in XSLT engine which can do powerful and rapid processing of XML documentation for presentation to users. In collaboration with colleagues at NCSA and ST ScI, we have been using this capability render VOTables in a fashion where the user can dynamically filter, sort, page and rearrange the table. The underlying library has now been used in three separate projects: the ST Legacy Archive, the ST JHU Registry and the NVO Simple Query tool. It can be adapted for use whenever information stored in a VOTable is to be displayed by a user.

Thomas McGlynn: The NVO Data Access Portal

I discuss the status of the NVO's portal for access to Virtual Observatory resources, especially changes since the Trieste meeting, notably the impact of upgrade to the V1.0 registry, and interaction between the quality of the portal interfaces and the quality of the VO metadata.

Chris Miller and Alvaro Egana: Fressia: A New Testing Framework for Application Software

We have developed a generalized testing framework which enables detailed functional testing of application software. This new framework is called Fressia. It utilizes a simplified Domain Specific Language (DSL) which makes writing tests simple and easy. Fressia works with most software packages (e.g., Java, Python, C++, etc.) and includes bindings to Selenium: the web application testing framework. Developers can use Fressia to test complex VO applications, i.e., those which utilize web services as well as specialized server-side software.

André Schaaff and François Bonnarel: Using the IVOA Characterisation to optimise a workflow process.

The execution of a workflow may require substantial computing resources and this can take a significant amount of time. Our goal is to go as far as possible in the validation of the workflow process before and during the execution of its components. This validation needs a knowledge of the components and of the data they consume/produce. The "Characterisation" standard introduces a way to satisfy these needs at the data level. In a first step we have prototype this work with AÏDA (Astronomical Image processIng Distribution Architecture). We propose a demo based on an image processing use case.

Petr Skoda and Patrick Lenz: Period04

Period04 is a computer program especially dedicated to the statistical analysis of large astronomical time series containing gaps. It is a reworked and extended successor of a famous Period98 allowing the easy multi-period analysis in nice java-based GUI. The latest version supports PLASTIC and we will present short demo of its interoperability with TOPCAT and Aladin.

Dinoj Surendran: WWT Equinox

We will demonstrate several new features of the Autumnal Equinox Release of WorldWide Telescope. Search facilities have been greatly expanded to include various IVOA standards and protocols in queries and results. Results can be received as VOTables and plotted and displayed. We will also provide more information and tools on how users can produce and host their own data sets for studies, surveys, and panoramas.

Mark Taylor: STILTS Graphics

STILTS is a mature and powerful package for all kinds of table manipulation, supporting VOTable, FITS, SQL and other formats, including access to very large tables. Based on the same infrastructure, it provides many of the same processing facilities as TOPCAT, but from the command line. The new version 2 of STILTS adds plotting to these facilities. Plotted graphs are highly configurable, offering points, errors, text labels, colour axes, multiple dataset overplotting and other features, with output currently to EPS, PNG, GIF and JPEG or direct to the screen. The non-interactive interface makes such plots available from the command line, in scripts, programmatically or server-side. A new server mode of operation also encourages co-location of on-the-fly plot generation with potentially large data sets.

Rick Wagner: Knoboo

Knoboo provides a browser-based interface to Python and Sage notebooks. Knoboo uses an application server to interpret the commands in the notebook, while a separate kernel server manages the Python processes. These servers can be run by an individual on a local machine, or distributed amongst different servers. I'll present an overview of Knoboo internals, how we've deployed it, and why I think this presents a novel approach for online data analysis.

Mike Fitzpatrick: Server-side Tools

We'll recap recent and planned changes to the VO-CLI developed within NVO that provide command-line access to VO services and data, as well as briefly discuss/demonstrate how these tools can be used to build CGI web-interfaces. Additionally, we'll present a prototype "user-space filesystem" that provides access to VOTables (or VOSpaces, or Registries, or ....) to legacy applications with no specific VO capabilities.

Vivekananda Moosani: VOPlot & VOStat

VOPlot is a data visualization tool developed in java. It can handle data in VOTable, ASCII and FITS formats. The new version of VOPlot adds 3D Scatter Plots, Histogram (2D binning of data) and Surface Plot. Plots can be tiled, cascaded and plotted points can be dragged and dropped from one plot to another. Inset plots are also supported.

VOStat provides a GUI for 'R' statistical routines used in astrophysics domain. VOStat comes in two flavors, as a web application and as a stand-alone java application. The stand-alone version can interoperate with other PLASTICized tools. VOStat supports data in ASCII and VOTable formats.