Re: [Xmlastro-discussion] Directions

[Peter C. C. <pc...@ec...>]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Michael Wilson wrote:

> Greetings.

Hello! Thanks for your useful message. I believe some of the concerns you
raise have been discussed in the past, at least partly.

> 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?

Based on conversations between Don and myself, I summarized the audience
for our schema as follows:

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1. Individual novice to intermediate observers interested in recording
informal observations in way that makes them easier to format or search.

2. Individual intermediate to advanced observers interested in recording
formal, high quality, scientifically significant data. Such observers
might also be using (or want to be using) a relational database as well.
What we do should have the ability to play happily with such systems.

3. Groups (clubs, teams of observers, etc) interested in recording
observations made by the group under various conditions.

4. Individuals or groups interested in exchanging observations or object
information to build a common store of such information. These people may
want to merge observations from different sources into a single document.
What we do should not make it too difficult to do such merges.

5. Not professionals.

----> cut here <----

Some of these points are admitedly a bit vauge and could use elaboration.
Personally, I'm coming at this from position #1. I do mostly "casual"
observing and collect very little hard data. I am looking for a way to
record my observations that will make it easy to put them on the web and
easy to search and index them. I would like, however, for the schema we
produce to have more utility than just that.

> For the human reader or for automated systems?

Don and I agreed that human readibility and writability would be
desirable.

> For potential integration of amateur observation with formal research
> programmes?

This would be great but I don't know much about what it would require. It
sounds like you might have some insight there.

> Secondly: what is the programme? What's to be done first? What sequence of
> capabilities are to be developed?

This is a list of topics of immediate interest taken from past messages to
this list.

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 1) Structure
 2) Root elements
 3) Object identification
 4) Positions of objects
 5) Time
 6) Location of observing site
 7) Observing conditions
 8) Instrument information
 9) Common observation elements
10) Specific (for object type) observation elements
11) References to external information sources
12) Document-like markup for use in <notes>

----> cut here <----

> Who is motivated to develop them?

I'm motivated to work on the features required to meet my immediate
need. This includes the features mentioned above at least.

> How will they be tested for suitability or completeness?

My view on that is to put the schema into action as soon as possible and
modify it based on real life experience. In fact, I hope to use what we
create as early as this summer (we just got 10 inches of snow here today
so summer is still a ways off).

> 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.

I agree completely. I downloaded the FGDC schema and took a quick look at
it. As you said there is a lot there and it would take time to digest it.
Is this something you'd be willing to look into? It sounds like you are
already at least a little familiar with the work.

> 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.

I was not familiar with StarGazersOnline.com but I checked it out after
seeing your message. The log information is interesting; it looks rather
similar to the sort of information we are talking about capturing with our
<observation> element (actually it seems like we are trying to do more).
Anyway, I think it might be nice to send a note to the people who created
that site... and other similar sites that might exist... and see what they
are doing. We could invite them to participate in XMLastro as well.

Peter