[Xmlastro-discussion] Directions

[Michael W. <mic...@ho...>]

Greetings.

As one of the original joiners of the list I have been 'luking' for many 
weeks and am now inspired to present some observations and concerns. Some of 
these are based on earlier postings which seem to remain pending issues. I 
hope that resurrecting these may inspire (or provoke) some clarifying 
discussion. I note for the record that I am primarily an astonomer and 
secondarily an XML wonk. I also come at this from a professional system 
integrator's perspective.

Firstly: I see lots of activity abou what is and what is not allowable 
within given XML methods. What remains is unclear is a precise purpose of 
this schema. What (precisely) is to be achieved? Integration and comparison 
of observations? Historical record keeping for posterities sake? For the 
human reader or for automated systems? For potential integration of amateur 
observation with formal research programmes? I have no axe to grind on any 
of these aspects, but wish to note that it is *not* clear from the current 
threads just where the emphasis lies.

Secondly: what is the programme? What's to be done first? What sequence of 
capabilities are to be developed? Who is motivated to develop them? How wil 
they be tested for suitability or completeness? How do we know when we're 
finished? In other words, if we are to avoid a potenetially demotivating 
open-ended task, what are the short -term and other targets, and how will we 
judge our progress?

Thirdly: considerable traffic has been devoted to issues of capturing the 
details of coordinate systems for both observer location (space and time) as 
well as observed entity. These issues are fundamentally identical to those 
that the geo-science community have been addressing since 1994 in developing 
the FGDC and ISO 19115 standards. Be warned: these are remarkably complex 
issues and a lot of compromises have been tediously negotiated to arrive at 
a workable, yet cumbersome, standard. The geo-science gang are no dummies, 
and have a lot of interest and backing from (earth) mapping authorities, the 
military, GIS vendors and commercial users of geo-data. These players have 
had a LOT mor emoney to throw at the problem than we well-meaning amateurs. 
A lot of hard lessons of been learned. XMLastro could well stand to benefit 
from this experience. One concrete activity could be to review and mine the 
geo-science schemas for useful adaptations for astronomical tasks.

Finally: are we truly convinced that no parallel efforts exist. Sites like 
StarGazersOnline.com offer observation logging and I am sure that there are 
others. Do we have any idea what structures they employ, or any baseline 
against which to compare them for adjusting to future interoperability.

My two cents' worth....

Cheers

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