IVOA Theory

Update 2023-09-20

These pages are quite out of date!

They will be updated and edited over the next couple of months with new activity from the Theory Interest Group. Stay tuned for more!

Ongoing activities

Works done by the Theory I.G. are divided in three packages.

Simulation Access Protocol

Most efforts are now done on the definition of an access protocol to access theoretical data through the Virtual Observatory.

Some use cases relevant to theoretical spectra are already taken into account in the Simple Spectral Access Protocol.

SimDAL the access protocol for theoretical data, will cover more use cases.

Status:

• SimDAL global architecture has been approved at ESAC 2014 InterOp
• SimDAL architecture has been refined during the Paris 2014 meeting

Simulation Data Model

The Simulation Data Model 1.0 has been recommended by EXEC on May 3rd 2012.

• The recommendation can be found here
• The implementation note is here

SKOS vocabularies

SKOS concepts are used in the Simulation Data Model to describe quantities and the algorithm in use in simulation. The development of these vocabularies (physical quantities, algorithms, input parameters, output parameters ...) is an ongoing process. Some of these vocabularies are accessible on Theory SKOS concepts website.

• Description: Concepts in this vocabulary are intended to be used to describe algorithms in SimDM classes.
• Authors: Nicolas Moreau, Zakaria Meliani, Fabrice Roy, Franck Le Petit, David Languignon
• The SKOS version has been produced by Nicolas Moreau

Charter

During the IVOA executive meeting of Jan. 2004 in Garching, Germany, the IVOA Theory Interest Group was formed with the goal of ensuring that theoretical data and services are taken into account in the IVOA standards process. In a whitepaper published on the IVOA site issues specific to theory are discussed. The document also summarizes tasks that a possible theory working group should accomplish, listed here as a proposed charter for the group.

The IVOA Theory Interest Group will:

• Provide a forum for discussing theory specific issues in a VO context.
• Contribute to other IVOA working groups to ensure that theory specific requirements are included.
• Incorporate standard approaches defined in these groups when designing and implementing services on theoretical archives.
• Define standard services relevant for theoretical archives.
• Promote development of services for comparing theoretical results to observations and vice versa.
• Define relevant milestones and assign specific tasks to interested parties.

This Interest Group is chaired by Franck Le Petit, vice-chair is Rick Wagner.

Project Pages

Protocols to access simulations

In the following we refer these protocols generically as Simulatuion Data Access Layer (SimDAL). Currentlly there are two types of SimDAL flavors (depending on its IVOA status)

• IVOA accepted protocols:
  • Simulation Data Model 1.0
  • Access to theoretical data is included in SSAP protocol an refers to the acces of theoretical spectra. More details can be found in this page TSAP (SSAP theory use case)

• TIG developments: Current developments try to converge to a possible common access protocol (that should include TSAP at the end). Current working protocols are:

Semantics

The Simulation Data Model largely relies on concepts. These concepts are organized in SKOS vocabularies following the Semantic Working Group recommendations. Semantic vocabulary needed to find/define different kinds of theoretical data

Simulation Data Base

SimDB developments (structure table in progress)

Simulation Data Model (dormant)

General data model for describing simulations. The version 1.0 has been recommended on May 3rd 2012.

Most results of this effort can now be found in the volute SVN repository on GoogleCode, originally set up by Norman Gray.

All comments received during the various RFC periods for the version 1.0 can be found http://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IVOATheorySimDMspec

SimDM/DM : all the documents for the specification during the preparation are there but please look at http://ivoa.net/Documents/SimDM/ for the last and recommended version.

Historical Follow-up

• Use cases (after Kyoto 2005 Interop)
• General requirements extracted from used cases (after Kyoto 2005 Interop)
• SNAP and why SNAP has been split up in SimDB and SimDAP (Jun 2008)

Theory Group Meetings

Follow these links to the Theory IG meetings - especially those at the IVOA Inter Op meetings. Here you will find the presentations made at those particular events.

Members

National contacts

Following the IVOA interoperability meeting in Cambridge, MA, USA May 2004, the various national VO's have assigned one or two contact persons for dealing with theory issues, representing the theory interest group to their community and vice versa, representing their community to the theory interest group. The following is the current list of these contact persons with their affiliation and e-mail addresses:

Links

This section aims to provide a poor-man's registry containing links to VO-like efforts in the field of theory. The format of the table is preliminary. Country may not be important, contacts should be added or confirmed.

Papers

Mailing-list

• General working-group discussion archive.

Use cases

During the interoperability meeting in Kyoto, 2005, it was decided that science use cases will be defined by a various members of the theory group. These were to be posted and used to extract requirements for the various IVOA working groups. A link to a page listing the submitted workpages can be accessed here.

• Theory_in_the_VO_whitepaper.pdf: new upload as original link was broken.