IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM15)

May 18 2005 @ 12.30-15.30 Local Time (Kyoto)

IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM15)

Logistics

The meeting will be held in the Kyoto International Conference Centre, Room 104.
A working lunch will be provided
Those attending by phone will be called from Kyoto - please provide number to Masatoshi

Agenda (Draft)

Roll Call
Minutes of FM13
Review of Actions
- paper on WG reporting
- draft of "what is VO" paper
Reports from VO projects (to be uploaded to web page)
Reports from WGs
Approval of Proposed Recommendations
- IVOA Identifiers
- UCD V1.06 "Moving to UCD1+"
- STC 1.0
Progress on Technical Roadmap
- review of milestones
- general review on technical progress
- see WG reporting paper and notes from Architecture Review Meeting
Key IVOA positions
- new Deputy chair
- Secretary and Technical Lead
- Applications Interest Group
Kyoto meeting - review of progress
Prague 2006 conference : next steps
IVOA Calendar
AOB
Summary of Actions

Reports from the Projects

(please upload you projects here - or email to Nic Walton) -- NicholasWalton - 18 May 2005
See also IvoaExecMeetingTM14.

AstroGrid - AndyLawrence, 13 May 2005

Progress Report

AstroGrid just passed a major milestone - our first public release of an open system for astronomical end-users - AstroGrid-Release V1.0. This is a preliminary release, with limited documentation and known bugs, but we are encouraging astronomers to register, start using the system, and feedback their experiences. We anticipate a fuller release in late summer - V1.1. This will be a release of an improved end-user system and a release of the AstroGrid software suite, which of course all other VO projects are welcome to make use of. Since the very recent announcement, we have 26 new registered users, making 71 in total now; it will be interesting to see how this grows.

The release is described on AstroGrid News and is available at http://www.astrogrid.org/release-v1.0

This release has a portal; access to virtual storage (MySpace); a browsable Registry; a query builder; a workflow building system; some simplified "science services" parameter driven tasks; and links to third party applications, like TopCat and Aladin. Some things work directly through the portal, using Cocoon. Others are launched on the client machine using Java Webstart, using an "AstroGrid Desktop".

Given that we now have a fully working system, we are having vigorous debates about how to maintain and support such a system, and the relation between the AstroGrid project and the UK data centres. (I bet this all sounds familiar to some of you ..)

The other thing of note is that we running a workshop for users in July in Cambridge. For further details see the news announcement, or the full details here.

Euro-VO - PeterQuinn, 11 Apr 2005

The final demonstration for the AVO project (and the end of the project) occurred at the ESA Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Villafranca Spain, from 25-26 January 2005. A full report can be found at http://www.euro-vo.org/twiki/bin/view/Avo/AvoDemo2005. This occasion also marked the initiation of the Euro-VO program. I would like AVO to be removed from the IVOA membership and replaced by Euro-VO (using the existing www.euro-vo.org as the home site for the moment). Euro-VO will be represented on the IVOA Exec by myself and Martin Kessler from ESAC. I ask that the IVOA Exec recognize and accept this transition.

The Euro-VO work program will be executed by three new organizations. The EURO-VO Data Centre Alliance (DCA), the Euro-VO Technology Centre (VOTC) and the EURO-VO Facility Centre (VOFC). A Memorandum of Understanding supporting the Euro-VO program has been drafted between ESO, ESA, PPARC, INAF, INSU, INTA, Max Planck Gesellschaft, NOVA and PPARC and is expected to be signed by mid-2005. A successful proposal (VO-TECH) to the EC FP6 scheme was lead by Andy Lawrence and generated 6.6 million Euro in funds. This contains 12 new software engineering positions who will work with 12 contributed positions from the six partner organizations (U.Edinburgh, U.Leicester, U.Cambridge, ESO, CDS, INAF) to execute a three year work program on VO infrastructure and tool development. VO-TECH is the first project under the VOTC umbrella and successfully started in January 2005. The DCA Executive Board had its first meeting in December 2004. A proposal to the EC FP6 for DCA funding was lead by Francoise Genova from CDS in March 2005. The proposal is seeking approximately 2 million Euro in funds for DCA startup over the next two years. Results from this proposal are expected by mid-year. Start-up activities for the VOFC are foreseen for 2005/2006 under the joint leadership of ESO and ESA. In line with the IVOA roadmap, Euro-VO is endeavoring to make 2005 a year of data centre take-up by hosting a workshop at ESO in June. The workshop currently has 80 registered participants and will conduct a series of overviews, lectures and tutorials aimed at giving data centre and large project staff the ability to publish data within the existing VO infrastructure (see http://euro-vo.org/workshop2005 for details).

NVO - BobHanisch, 13 May 2005

Significant progress has been made on the VOStore concept, by which users of the virtual observatory can store data files and tables in a distributed and secure manner. Results from remote services will have their results stored in VOStore, with location transpar-ency, and the results can be shared with collaborators. VOStore motivates the implemen-tation of authentication and authorization capabilities, and various approaches are being evaluated.

Substantial effort was spent this quarter on evaluating the quality and completeness of registry entries and providing feedback to resource and service publishers about how to improve their resource descriptions. Common errors and omissions in resource metadata are being addressed through modifications to the Resource Metadata definition docu-ment. Issues concerning compliance with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesting protocols have been worked out, and collaboration has continued on defining the standard interface specification for registry queries.

Work has also progressed on the spectral data model and the associated Simple Spectrum Access Protocol (SSAP), with both to be presented and discussed at the spring IVOA Interoperability workshop in Kyoto. A number of prototype implementations of spectral data access services and spectral data display and analysis tools have been deployed, and these have helped to inform and refine the data model and SSAP work.

An IVOA VOEvent workshop was held at Caltech and concluded with an agreement by an international team on an information infrastructure to support the burgeoning field of event-based astronomy. The objective of the VOEvent working group is to build an open standard for exchanging messages about immediate astronomical events, including publication, archiving, query, subscription, and aggregation. The VOEvent standard has been agreed in rough form at the workshop, and has buy-in from projects including GCN, LSST, Pan-STARRS, Palomar-Quest, LIGO, eStars, Raptor, Pairitel, ATEL, and Hands-On Universe.

The Space-Time Coordinates (STC) metadata specification and associated XML schema were promoted to Proposed Recommendation status. VOEvent discussions have helped to focus the development team on the importance of the STC and have led to comments during the open Request-for-Comments period.

Planning for the second NVO Summer School has gotten underway. A site has been secured (Aspen Meadows Resort, Aspen, Colorado), dates have been set (6-15 September 2005), the faculty has been recruited, and announcements have been made. A detailed curriculum is under development. Full details are available on the NVO Summer School website at http://www.us-vo.org/summer-school/2005/.

(From the NVO Quarterly Report for January-March 2005. The full report can be found at http://us-vo.org/pubs/files/fy95q2.pdf.)

China-VO - ChenzhouCui, 16 May 2005

An updated version of VOTFilter, an XML filter for OpenOffice Calc to read and write VOTable file, is nearly finished. After a short time test, it will be open to the community. The first release is available from http://services.china-vo.org/vofilter/.

China-VO is cooperating with National Center for Data Mining (NCDM), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on a real-time demo for iGRID 2005, “From Federal Express to Lambdas: Transporting Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Using UDT”.

A senior Grid developer is under probation at NAO (China). After one-month test, we will decide whether he will join the China-VO group.

France VO - FrancoiseGenova, 16 May 2005

The French VO has undergone several important actions in the last period:

a census of VO-related projects in French laboratories: 45 answers were received. Nearly all the French laboratories sent at least one answer. The projects cover a wide range of topics, from astrometry to theory, and also Sun/Earth relations (space plasma physics and the study of the Sun), and the study of planets, which are also included in the French VO.

the first plenary meeting of the French VO took place in Paris (4-7 April 2005). The program and viewgraphs from talks is available. More than 50 people attended, and nearly all the laboratories were represented. The following topics were addressed:
- status of VO actions in the different disciplines covered by the French VO (including a talk by P. Padovani about the scientific aspects of the astronomical VO)
- French VO disciplinary services
- VO policy of laboratories
- presentation of several thematic services

The role and actions of the French VO (Action Spécifique Observatoires Virtuels France) were discussed. It was in particular decided to settle a mailing list for technical discussion, complementary to the IVOA WG mailing lists. Three satellite technical meetings were also organized:

- feedback from October 2004 "Standards and tools of the VO" tutorial and preparation of Kyoto Interoperability meeting (organized by F. Bonnarel and A. Schaaff)
- spectroscopy (organized by P. Prugniel)
- theory in the VO (organized by H. Wozniak)

A 'thematic school' for scientists, "The Virtual Observatory, a new tool for scientists", got support from the CNRS. It will take place 7-9 November 2005, in Obernai near Strasbourg.

The French VO opened two Announcement of Opportunity in 2005. The first one was aimed at supporting French participants to the Kyoto Interoperability meeting (and similar meetings for the other disciplines) and to the Garching Euro-VO Workshop. The second (closed on 7 June 2005) aims at supporting French participants to the El Escorial Interoperability meeting. It will also support thematic or technical meetings, such as the one organized in June by space plasma and solar physicists to discuss common metadata. Another working group is settled, in the context of the Europlanet project, to discuss the extension of IVOA standards to planetology.

Reports from WGs

GWS-WG - GuyRixon, 2005-05-13

VO Support interfaces was due to go to v1.0 and PR in January. It didn't, because there was no spare effort to write its normative WSDL. The WSDL contract has now been produced as part of VO Support Interfaces 0.22. Progress should be faster from here on in. Completion to full recommendation in the summer of 2005 seems likely.

VO basic profile is still at v0.1. This profile mandates VO support interfaces, so it is waiting on the latter.

VOStore is now at v0.18 following meetngs between NVO and AstroGrid and recent input from Caltech. There are now several local prototypes of this standard and serious interoperability trials are likely to begin shortly after the Kyoto meeting. VOStore cannot be properly finished and signed off until the security arrangements are agreed; however, the security is largely orthoganal to the rest of the problem and the interoperability trials don't need the full security solution. Completion to v1.0 and PR during 2005 seems probable.

The Asynchronous Activities work-package has spawned the Universal Worker Service specification. This is an attempt to refactor the asynchronicity features of AstroGrid's Common Execution Architecture to work with the OASIS WS-Resource Framework suite of standards and so to use some toolkits and software libraries from outside the VO movement. If IVOA chooses to standardize something based on CEA, then UWS is the proposed web-service interface. The timescale for completing this work package depends on the level of interest and involvement after Kyoto. Completion during 2005 is possible but not certain.

The single-sign-on (SSO) work-package has drafted several new documents: a review of Shibboleth (requested at the Cambridge MA and Pune meetings); a specification of the trust model for authentication (including the procedures for providing identity certificates without pain); and an architecture for the SSO support services that allows integration with Shibboleth. These documents are being presented for the first time in Kyoto, so the group's reaction is not known. If the basic ideas in the documents find favour, then I would expect the SSO profile to go to 1.0 and PR in the last quarter of 2005. Research in the time since the Pune meeting has led to one document (the proposed message-security protocol at v0.1) being deprecated as inappropriate for the IVO's needs. Sometimes we need to go back to find the right path!

All the current drafts are linked from the GWS-WG page for the Kyoto meeting.

UCDs - AndreaPreiteMartinez - 13 May 2005

According to the RoadMap approved in the InterOpSep2004 meeting of Pune, a RFC on the PR document "UCD (Unified Content Descriptor) - moving to UCD1+. Version 1.06" was issued on Oct27. At that date there were three ucd documents: the main PR ucd document, the list of ucd words (WD-20040823), and a Note describing the subdivision of the em-spectrum.

Although the community was solicited before the end of the RFC period, only 4 answers with comments were received. But the interesting point was that most of the comments referred to the list of ucd words (WD) and not to the PR document.

In the mean time, activity on UCDs went on with the collection of comments and suggestions on the list of words, the release of an updated version of the list (WD-20050429), and with the development of a number of tools devoted to the handling/assigning of UCDs. For the Kyoto InterOpMay2005 meeting we propose to merge the UCD documents into one main document for which we will reopen the prescribed period of RFC.

At the same meeting we will start a joint discussion with the VOEvent WG on the semantic aspects of the "event vocabulary".

Data Models wg, JonathanMcDowell, 15 May 2005

The main progress has been on Spectra (SSA), STC and Characterization. The SSA model has been somewhat refined and several independent implementations of the VOTable and XML schema have been created which help validate the model. We are working on a full implementation and we are making adjustments to match Doug's SSA protocol document.

The CDS and Maryland teams have proposed schemas for Characterization which are quite similar, and we will work to merge these and map them to the Space Time coords schema.

The STC schema was put forward as a Proposed Recommendation and Arnold is reviewing the input received.

Registry wg, TonyLinde, 13 May 2005

There have been significant spurts of activity on the wg mailing list over recent months, many of them initiated and coordinated by Ray Plante, to whom we all offer our thanks for his efforts. These discussions have led to a number of proposals which will be discussed at this meeting:

Metadata:

a v1.1 revision of the RM to incorporate lessons from current practice and quality
an effort to push to a v1.0 VOResource that can go through the standards process. Current changes on tap are minor but are being affected by the Registry Interface standard development.
preparations for overhauling an important VOResource extension, currently called VODataService which looks specifically at describing data collections and services or applications. Important input to this is the Astrogrid work on CEA and the Universal Worker Service.

Registry Interface:

a push to release a self consistent (v1.0?) working draft of the Registry Interface document. This document describes the harvesting and searching interfaces for registries.

Curation:

NVO has undertaken at systematic review of current registry records to look at what is useful and what is not. The results are feeding into the latest version of the RM.
Discussions are underway about how we can encourage good quality metadata in our records and what the role of the registries are in the curation of this information. At the center of this discussion is the proposal for a metadatum called ResourceVerificationLevel (or just verification level) which helps define the roll registries must take in curation.

Document Standards WG, BobHanisch, 13 May 2005

The last major action of this WG was to publish additional guidelines for IVOA document management (naming conventions, clarification of review and promotion rules, etc.) in April 2004 (http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/DocStdProc.html).

This topic: IVOA > WebHome > IvoaRepMin > IvoaExecMeetingFM15
Topic revision: r18 - 2005-05-16 - AndyLawrence