RegTAP 1.2 Proposed Recommendation: Request for Comments

RegTAP, formally known as the IVOA Registry Relational Schema, is the standard way for clients to query the VO Registry. Version 1.2 adds tables to give the coverage in space, time, and spectrum and a tap_table view intended to replace GloTS. To make use of these features, we require a few optional ADQL features and the extra UDF ivo_interval_overlaps.

Latest version of RegTAP can be found at:

• https://ivoa.net/documents/RegTAP/20240124/
• Bleeding edge versions during RFC can be built from the sources, which are kept on github. Feel free to open bugs or pull requests there at any time.

RegTAP is a fairly long standard. For review, it is probably advisable to only skim the unchanged text. For the purposes of this RFC, it is probably sufficient to closely inspect sects. 4.5, 7, 8.15 through 8.18, 9, and 10 (in particular 10.13). See also appendix E.

Reference Interoperable Implementations

Server-side implementations exist in the TAP services at http://reg.g-vo.org/tap and https://registry.euro-vo.org/regtap/tap.

Client-side code exploiting the new spatial tables is present in pyVO; WIRR also has constraints on coverage in space, time, and spectrum.

Support for tap_tables is less common; however, once the data providers fix their metadata records, the content of tap_tables essentially is equivalent to what we already have in GloTS, and hence the editor would argue that all clients using GloTS (e.g., TOPCAT) count as reference implementations of tap_tables.

Implementations Validators

A validator is part of the source distribution at https://github.com/ivoa-std/RegTAP. See the validator subdirectory. Note that it requires a registry seeded with the data provided, and hence the suite can only be used by the service operators.

Comments from the IVOA Community during RFC/TCG review period: 2024-02-01 - 2024-03-20

The comments from the TCG members during the RFC/TCG review should be included in the next section.

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Comments from TCG member during the RFC/TCG Review Period: 2024-02-01 - 2024-03-20

WG chairs or vice chairs must read the Document, provide comments if any (including on topics not directly linked to the Group matters) or indicate that they have no comment.

IG chairs or vice chairs are also encouraged to do the same, althought their inputs are not compulsory.

TCG Chair & Vice Chair

Applications Working Group

Data Access Layer Working Group

Data Model Working Group

Grid & Web Services Working Group

Registry Working Group

Semantics Working Group

Data Curation & Preservation Interest Group

Education Interest Group

Knowledge Discovery Interest Group

Operations Interest Group

Radio Astronomy Interest Group

Solar System Interest Group

Theory Interest Group

Time Domain Interest Group

Standards and Processes Committee

TCG Vote : Bambi eyes - more Bambi eyes

If you have minor comments (typos) on the last version of the document please indicate it in the Comments column of the table and post them in the TCG comments section above with the date.