IVOA Executive Committee Meeting (FM38)

Monday December 6 @ 17.00-19.00

Supplementary: Thursday December 9 @ 12.30-14.00

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Logistics

Monday meeting in the Asu-nara Room, Nikko Nara Hotel

Thursday meeting in Room 4 Nara Prefecture New Public Hall

DRAFT Agenda FM38

1. Roll Call and Agenda
2. Minutes of TM37
3. Status of Actions
4. Project Reports - Significant Events Only
5. Report of the TCG meeting and TCG status
6. Reports by WGs - WG Chairs
7. Approval of new IVOA Recommendation(s) [Standing Item]
8. Inactive IVOA members (PP)
9. Possible new IVOA members (PP)
10. IVOA Interops: attendance and frequency (all)
11. IVOA basic standards: what's still missing? (all)
12. Proposal for an IVOA Education Interest Group (all)
13. Data center review of IVOA standards (BH, all)
14. Future Interops (FP, AK)
15. Date of next meeting (TM39)
16. AOB
17. Summary of Actions

Reports from the Projects

ArVO

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AstroGrid

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Australia-VO

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BRAVO

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China-VO

China-VO 2010 was held successfully at Lijiang, Yunnan from Nov. 25-28. China-VO 2010 is the 9th annual meeting organized by the China-VO project. The theme of the meeting is "From VO to Astroinformatics". About 80 representatives from nationwide observatories, universities and companies attended the meeting. For more information please visit:

http://www.china-vo.org/events/cvo2010/ (Sorry, the website is in Chinese)

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CVO

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Euro-VO

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ESO-VO

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ESAVO

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France VO

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GAVO

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HVO

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Japan-VO

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VAO

The primary activities of the VAO from the award of NSF Cooperative Agreement No. 0834235 to the VAO, LLC have been associated with the placement of subawards and the development of the Project Execution Plan. Final subaward agreements have been signed and placed with all organizations. Invoices are being received and payments are being made per the schedules defined for each organization in the subaward. Drawdowns on the NSF award are being made to cover subaward costs and those costs associated with the management and governance of the VAO.

Over the summer months, the VAO Program Council worked diligently to create the Project Execution Plan, or PEP. The PEP describes in detail the products and services that will be created and/or supported by the VAO, giving a general plan for five years and a specific plan for Years 1 and 2 of the program. The PEP was submitted on time, 90 days following the start of the Cooperative Agreement, on 13 August 2010.

The VAO, LLC Board of Directors held its first face-to-face meeting in Washington, DC on 29-30 July 2010. The primary matter of business was a review of the PEP, which requires Board approval prior to submission to NSF and NASA. The Board endorsed the PEP with a few recommendations, which were implemented prior to submission of the PEP to the agencies. The Board also updated the terms of the Board members, VAO officers, and VAO director to be better aligned with the Cooperative Agreement.

The VAO held its first all-hands team meeting on 30 September–1 October 2010 at the headquarters of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our primary goal was to make sure all staff involved in VAO operations and development understood their roles and responsibilities toward the PEP, and to confirm the scope and schedule defined therein. No significant issues arose. Several minor modifications to the PEP were identified and submitted to the agencies; these are matters of clarification only, not changes in scope or deliverables.

Prior NASA support for several of the VAO organizations (HEASARC at GSFC, IPAC at Caltech, and ~25% of the efforts at STScI) allowed us to continue a basic level of operational support for the extant NVO applications and tools, including aliveness and compliance testing of VO services. Our group at Caltech also completed the transition of the IVOA Web site from ESO, where it had been hosted since 2002. VAO personnel also continued their participation in IVOA Working Groups and Interest Groups, helping to bring several IVOA standards to endorsement as Recommendations.

-- BobHanisch

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RVO

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SVO

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VObs.it

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VO-India

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Reports from WGs & IGs(follows order as at http://www.ivoa.net/forum/)

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Applications WG

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Data Access Layer WG

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Data Models WG

• Obs/TAP

Description of the Observation data model core components and the specification of an OBS/TAP service, using data model elements and TAP protocol. Last version of the draft issued on 1st december after 2 iterations among authors.

• Photometry DM ( Euro-VO Aida project)
  • Working draft issued on November 30th on DM list by Jesus Salgado and in collaboration with engineers and scientists from ESAVO, SVO, CDS/Strasb.U. and ESO , in coordination with DM chair and vice chair.
  • First draft (v0.1) was sent to EuroVO-SAC (Science Advisory Committee) that reviewed the draft and gave comments that were included in present v0.2 document.
  • Prototyping and implementating the current euro-VO Model
  1. Filter profile service (SVO)
  2. SSAP like services from SVO providing photometric data (4 services)
  3. Vizier photometric service prototype It is based on a ConeSearch service and wraps existing tables with photometric metadata using a labeling method for existing columns and additional metadata. (presented by Seb. Derriere in Apps)
  4. Update of VOSpec (6.5beta3) to support SSAP and cone search with photometric information and as a Filter Profile Service client to take photometry filter details and generation of synthetic photometry.

VAO complementary approach recently circulated on DM list by Jonathan McDowell. It has a clear re-use and extension mecanism of existing data models like Characterisation ( spectral Axis) and Spectrum ( Target, Data,..) and focuses on a general definition of a new CoordFrame for (flux, spectral coordinates) of isolated points in an SED. It also takes into account aperture photometry. It explores two serialisation formats : FITS and VOtable.

The convergence of both modeling lines will be studied during Nara and if reached will lead to an efficient and implementable list of photometric metadata.

• New Characterisation DM version 2.0 (F. Bonnarel, I. Chilingarian)

Driven by the explicit description of Level 4, for the description of sensitivity and PSF variations. New classes include: Coverage Sensitivity maps, Resolution variation as maps or functions descriptions, etc.. Prototype definition of a data linking container for accessing the data set: type of data format, mimetype, access url and access parameters.

• Utypes and Units draft in stand-by state due to lack of man power
• Dissemination

On the occasion of various meeting (ADASS, ADA, etc) DM members advertised the emerging standards and try to answer astronomers involved in data publishing on how current data models in IVOA could fit their needs.

Discussion on Data modeling on Planetary data or other disciplines (climat changes)

-- MireilleLouys

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Grid and Web Services Working Group

• Universal Worker Service (UWS) is now an IVOA Recommendation
• Web Services Basic Profile has just completed its TCG Review period: minor corrections need to be made to the document
• VO Standard Interface (VOSI) has been clarified and restructured per RFC comments. TCG Review period to start imminently
• There is a new draft of VOSpace 2.0 with a new alternative interpretation of UWS. Another alternative interpretation will probably be adopted this week with a swift update of VOSpace 2.0 following and PR/RFC in January.

-- MatthewGraham

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Registry WG

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Semantics/UCD WG

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VOEvent

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VOTable WG

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Data Curation and Preservation IG

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Knowledge Discovery in Databases IG

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Theory IG

The Theory IG activity has been focused on the Simulation Data Model and the Simulation Data Access Layer.

1. An intermediate meeting opened to all people willing to actively contribute to Theory standards has been organised in Strasbourg on Sep 16-17. People present were: Cervino, Derriere, Gheller, Gray, Lemson, Le Petit, Manzato, Moreau, Ooghe, Rodrigo, Wozniak. See: http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/StrasbourgSimDaysSep2010. Several actions have then started or have been completed since then:
2. the Note explaining the Simulation Data Model (SimDM) has been completed. Discussion within the Strasbourg participants has started on Nov 15. The Note has been released on the Theory IG on Nov 24 for comments. It will be updated according to the Theory list inputs.
3. this SimDM Note has been sent to DM list by DM WG chair for additional discussion on Nov 29. The SimDM specification process will be launched after Nara under the auspices of the DM WG.
4. A Note on SimDM implementation examples (Le Petit et al.) has been released and distributed for comments on the Theory and DM lists.
5. all documents (specification, XML schemas, etc.) needed for the SimDM specification has been prepared and will be updated according to the results of the discussions. All documents are on Volute and easily accessible through a dedicated page (cf. Theory wiki pages). http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IVOATheorySimDMspec
6. the SimDM will be presented during a DM WG session in Nara
7. the SimDAL specification is in preparation. A discussion about a TAP implementation on SimDM (SimTAP) has started in Strasbourg and will continue in Nara during a Theory session and a DAL one. The aim is to be ready by Napoli INTEROP.

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